Jul 22, 2026 · 42 min · 14 segments
"You can't put ketchup on shawarma" became a global rallying cry, and the brand behind it is now blitzing past 50 locations. Today on 🍔Restaurant 🤖Tech 📈Trends I sit down with Andrew Kirkwood, VP…
Andrew KirkwoodGuestJustinHostI want to dive a little bit deeper into this because you're right, shawarma has really existed as a category that's really been dominated by independents for a really long time.
It's really big in Canada.
Also, even in the US, it's pretty much all independents even today.
Was it really the social media thing that kind of kicked off this brand? What does it take to actually modernize this type of a concept and get it ready for franchising without losing what people like about shawarma in the first place? Or in the case of Shelby's, what made the restaurant number one work?
I think there is a, in the restaurant industry, there's cycles and nobody wants to open a burger joint.
Smash burgers forward for a little while and nobody wants to order it, open a chicken joint anymore or chicken sandwiches or burrito.
And mom and pop shops have done it really well for so long because it takes a lot of care in doing this product well.
And it's tough to do at scale, especially without really good systems and standards in place.
And, you know, When people have shawarma, I think it's almost a no brainer to be like, why isn't there somebody doing this? And our CEO is a genius when it comes to branding and innovation and one of those guys that will try sort of anything and see if it works.
And he had a lot of people telling him he needs to start franchising this business after that first location opened.
And it took him a little while to be like, do I really want to go that path? And then he met somebody that could help him franchise.
And they, without having a bunch of knowledge of how to make this happen, they tried.
And that's when I came on board after rolling through that first location is to be, you know, the person that's going to standardize, make some SOPs, understand a little more about governmental compliance, franchisee onboarding, some training, how the systems are going to play together, and then how we're going to take this thing to scale.
The thing is, it even is more difficult when you don't have the foundation of your menu set.
I want to dive a little bit deeper into this because you're right, shawarma has really existed as a category that's really been dominated by independents for a really long time.
It's really big in Canada.
Also, even in the US, it's pretty much all independents even today.
Was it really the social media thing that kind of kicked off this brand? What does it take to actually modernize this type of a concept and get it ready for franchising without losing what people like about shawarma in the first place? Or in the case of Shelby's, what made the restaurant number one work?
I think there is a, in the restaurant industry, there's cycles and nobody wants to open a burger joint.
Smash burgers forward for a little while and nobody wants to order it, open a chicken joint anymore or chicken sandwiches or burrito.
And mom and pop shops have done it really well for so long because it takes a lot of care in doing this product well.
And it's tough to do at scale, especially without really good systems and standards in place.
And, you know, When people have shawarma, I think it's almost a no brainer to be like, why isn't there somebody doing this? And our CEO is a genius when it comes to branding and innovation and one of those guys that will try sort of anything and see if it works.
And he had a lot of people telling him he needs to start franchising this business after that first location opened.
And it took him a little while to be like, do I really want to go that path? And then he met somebody that could help him franchise.
And they, without having a bunch of knowledge of how to make this happen, they tried.
And that's when I came on board after rolling through that first location is to be, you know, the person that's going to standardize, make some SOPs, understand a little more about governmental compliance, franchisee onboarding, some training, how the systems are going to play together, and then how we're going to take this thing to scale.
The thing is, it even is more difficult when you don't have the foundation of your menu set.
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