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Most founders start their restaurants in the red. Guy Allen did the opposite, turning a 12-seat sushi bar into a $3M business with lines out the door and plans for a $50M exit. He’s the founder proving restaurants can scale – if you treat them like startups.
Here’s what we talk about:
- Leaving real estate tech after a decade to start over in food
- Turning a sushi photography hobby into a six-figure uni import business
- Why importing sea urchin taught him everything about supply chains
- How Sendo became one of NYC’s busiest sushi spots – with zero marketing spend
- The “three ingredients” behind every successful restaurant: food, location, brand
- Why most chefs fail at business, and why one restaurant alone is a bad bet
- The real margins of restaurants (and what “good” actually looks like)
- How restaurant investing and profit-sharing actually work
- The surprising scalability of sushi, and how he plans to reach 40 locations
- Building publicly in an industry famous for secrecy
Cool Links:
Sponsors:
Chapters:
- 00:00 - The Harsh Reality of Restaurant Ownership
- 00:43 - The Sushi Business Model and Guy’s Background
- 01:35 - Guy’s Pivot from Real Estate Tech to Sushi
- 02:56 - From Sushi Hobby to Social Media Platform
- 05:44 - Importing Uni: Economics and Challenges
- 10:11 - Sushi Quality, Branding, and Market Positioning
- 13:22 - Why Premium Sushi Doesn’t Scale
- 14:47 - Transition from Importing to Restaurant Ownership
- 16:51 - Why Most Restaurants Fail: The Role of Branding
- 18:44 - Building a Restaurant Brand and Early Success
- 22:56 - Financing and Structuring Growth
- 27:27 - The Surprising Upsides of the Restaurant Business
- 29:54 - Scaling to 40 Restaurants and a $50M Exit
- 33:49 - The Need for Transparency in the Restaurant Industry
This podcast is a ridiculous concept: high-net-worth people reveal their personal finances. Inspired by real conversations happening in the Hampton community.
Your Host: Harry Morton
- Founder of Lower Street, a podcast production company helping brands launch and grow top-tier podcasts.
- Co-parents a cow named Eliza.
What is Moneywise?
This is Moneywise, a podcast where hosts Sam Parr and Harry Morton are joined by high-net-worth guests to explore exclusive insights into personal finance and lifestyle tailored for other high-net-worth people, or those on their way. They'll get radically transparent about the numbers, revealing things like their burn rates, portfolios, and spending habits. This podcast was made for the Hampton community, a private, highly-vetted, peer membership community for founders and CEOs of fast-growing, tech-enabled startups. Check it out at https://joinhampton.com/.