EP. 250: David Dressler - Tender Greens Co-Founder on Building a 1,200-Person Restaurant Brand

How do you grow one restaurant into a $100 million brand with 1,200 employees? David Dressler, co-founder of Tender Greens, started with a plan written into the company's name: 10 years, 3 guys, 30 restaurants. In this episode of Test. Optimize. Scale., host Jason Fishman interviews David Dressler, co-founder of Tender Greens, the fast casual restaurant brand he helped scale from a single 1,700-square-foot location in Culver City to a $100 million company. Tender Greens was named one of the ten best restaurant chains in the world by Condé Nast and one of the 25 most innovative consumer brands by Forbes. David now works as a trusted thinking partner to founders and executives, including leaders taking their organizations through AI transformation. Questions this episode answers: \- How did Tender Greens start? (Three hotel colleagues, a friends-and-family raise of $1 million, and a lot of no's) \- What was the idea behind Tender Greens? (Fine dining quality without the cost of fine dining) \- What happened on opening day? (A line around the block, and no food left by 7 p.m.) \- How did Tender Greens market itself before social media? (PR, local sponsorships, and "best of" lists) \- How do you choose restaurant locations? (Four criteria, set before you fall in love with a building) \- Why develop your own talent instead of hiring experienced chefs? \- What is a leader's real job? (Make it easy for the team to do great work, and remove roadblocks) \- When should founders bring in an advisory board and a C-suite? \- How do you know when it is time to step aside as CEO? \- Why is leadership lonely, and what can you do about it? \- How should leaders optimize? (Ask the people doing the work, let them own the fix, then revisit it) \- How should teams think about AI tools? (Move from doer to orchestrator and quality control) Connect with David Dressler: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidtdressler/ Website: https://daviddressler.co Newsletter: The Early Signal (weekly on LinkedIn) Test. Optimize. Scale. is a weekly podcast from Digital Niche Agency covering growth marketing, capital raising, and business strategy, hosted by Jason Fishman. Subscribe for new episodes every week.