Fast Casual Executive Summit

Savory CEO to detail ‘Savory System’ growth strategy at Fast Casual Executive Summit

Shauna Smith, Savory co-founder, and CEO Clay Dover, will share insight on the company’s “Savory System,” which is a roadmap on building a management infrastructure that handles growth at the upcoming Fast Casual Executive Summit, taking place October 4-6 in Arlington, Texas.

Image: Willie Lawless, Connect Media

July 13, 2026 by Judy Mottl — Editor: RetailCustomerExperience.com & DigitalSignageToday.com, Connect Media

Summarize with

It takes more than just a boatload of money to scale a restaurant brand. It takes a strong strategy to drive hyper-growth.

One successful strategy is in play at Savory Fund where leaders have designed a repeatable framework that aims to professionalize brands without stripping away the soul.

Savory Fund launched eight years ago and the private equity firm now has 13 brands in its portfolio including Pincho, Mo'Bettahs Hawaiian Style Food, Houston TX Hot Chicken and Via 313 Pizzeria. It partners with brands to help them scale without losing what made the brands great.

Savory Fund's growth strategy is the focus of a session talk, "From Capital to Culture: What It Actually Takes to Scale a Restaurant Brand," at the upcoming Fast Casual Executive Summit, taking place October 4-6 in Arlington, Texas.

Session panelists Shauna Smith, Savory Fund co-founder, and Savory Fund CEO Clay Dover, will share insight on the company's "Savory System," which is a roadmap on building a management infrastructure that handles growth, as well as why most brands fail at scale and operational failure points.

Smith and Dover will detail how to navigate the high-stakes transition of control and protecting brand identity at the same time, as well as what traditional private equity gets wrong about restaurant culture.

Reasons for failing when scaling

In a preview interview, Dover, former CEO of Velvet Taco who took on the CEO role at the start of this year, shared some insight about why brands fail at scale.

One top reason? Growing too quickly.

"At Savory, we see it constantly — a concept with strong AUVs at two or three locations rushes to 15, and everything that made it special breaks. The founder's instincts were what made the brand special, and instincts don't replicate," Dover said in an email interview.

What does replicate is infrastructure: proven unit economics, documented systems, a leadership bench and a supply chain built for the tenth restaurant, not the second, he said.

"Growth exposes weakness; it never fixes it. If the model isn't consistently profitable at the unit level before expansion, scale just multiplies the problem faster. That's why we won't add locations until the foundation — people, processes, and P&L — can carry the weight. The brands that win at scale aren't the ones that grew fastest," said Dover.

Best practices in play

One key to success in growing a brand is to hire ahead of the growth curve, according to Savory's CEO.

"Build the leadership bench before you need it — bring in multi-unit operators, finance, and HR leadership when you have five restaurants, not 25," said Dover. "It feels expensive at the time, but promoting your best restaurant manager into a role they've never done, mid-expansion, is far more expensive. I've learned this both the hard way, and also experienced the value of investing in it ahead of the curve."

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About Judy Mottl

Judy Mottl is the editor of RetailCustomerExperience.com and DigitalSignageToday.com at Connect Media. She is an award-winning editor, reporter and blogger who has worked for top media for nearly four decades, including AOL, InformationWeek and Internet News, as well as for leading technology providers including HP. She’s written everything from breaking news to in-depth industry trends and reported on technology long before the internet arrived, including the debut of the first smartphone. When she's not sharing insights on digital signage deployments and trends in retail customer experience she's on the beach or watching the latest live murder trial.

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