The Franchise Scale Up Show with Guy Coffey
Sep 16, 2026 · 27 min · 10 segments
How do you grow a restaurant franchise without losing the relationships that made the first location work? In this episode of The Franchise Scale-Up Show, I sit down with John Gelastopoulos of Broken…
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Franchise Scale-Up Show with me, Guy Coffey, and a very special guest today, Mr. John Gelastopoulos from the Broken Yolk Cafe that started in San Diego but is quickly going across the country.
We were talking a little bit about the connections with Greeks, with my wife's family and everything that you do.
And just as a synopsis, I just want to do like really, really shorten your story because it's fascinating,
boil it down and then we can have a great conversation that'll help people that are listening that want to grow businesses, be better leaders.
get scrappy, learn how to do things on the fly and do it really well while they're caring for people and helping them be more authentic.
I have any of this wrong, but at 17, you came from a village at the base of Mount Olympus where the Greek gods are and came to America with less than $20 in your pocket.
And started working in a restaurant, obviously, to make money, put food in your mouth and everything like that.
As I understand it, just getting to the broken yoke aspect of this quickly is you were trying to get them as a client, a listing client for a while.
And then you walked in and you saw that they were opening really early, but they were done by 2 p.m. And you were comparing that with your life where you were working your business brokerage job during the day, also working a job at night.
And you're like, these people get to be at home with their family every dinner time because they wake up super early and they get their work done.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Franchise Scale-Up Show with me, Guy Coffey, and a very special guest today, Mr. John Gelastopoulos from the Broken Yolk Cafe that started in San Diego but is quickly going across the country.
We were talking a little bit about the connections with Greeks, with my wife's family and everything that you do.
And just as a synopsis, I just want to do like really, really shorten your story because it's fascinating,
boil it down and then we can have a great conversation that'll help people that are listening that want to grow businesses, be better leaders.
get scrappy, learn how to do things on the fly and do it really well while they're caring for people and helping them be more authentic.
I have any of this wrong, but at 17, you came from a village at the base of Mount Olympus where the Greek gods are and came to America with less than $20 in your pocket.
And started working in a restaurant, obviously, to make money, put food in your mouth and everything like that.
As I understand it, just getting to the broken yoke aspect of this quickly is you were trying to get them as a client, a listing client for a while.
And then you walked in and you saw that they were opening really early, but they were done by 2 p.m. And you were comparing that with your life where you were working your business brokerage job during the day, also working a job at night.
And you're like, these people get to be at home with their family every dinner time because they wake up super early and they get their work done.
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