Burger building blocks

February 04, 2010

As chief executive officer of TCH Restaurant Group, Bob Dorfman has taken a big bite of the Five Guys brand’s franchise business, using it to build a multimillion-dollar company.

You don’t expect the former president of a billion-dollar operation to come this close to flipping burgers.

True, Bob Dorfman isn’t holding a spatula. But he is parlaying the success of a burger-and-fries restaurant franchise into a multimillion-dollar company.

The main offices for his young, ambitious company are located directly above the Five Guys restaurant on Ashley Drive — you could say he’s right on top of the griddle.

Those offices serve as the headquarters for TCH Restaurant Group, Inc., a not-quite-two-year old company that brought in $15 million in 2009. The business is built on the successful operation of multiple Five Guys restaurant locations across the country, with stores located in three states.

Each of the letters in TCH represents a franchise city — Tampa, Columbus, Ohio, and Houston — where the company has seven, five, and six stores open respectively.

While eighteen stores constitutes a respectable franchise operation, TCH’s long-term plan sets it apart from much of the competition. (He is not the only Five Guys franchisee on the Gulf Coast — see “Bent on Burgers” in this issue — but poised for the most rapid growth.)

At present, the company owns the rights to more than 100 locations, a scenario that could generate nine digits’ worth of revenue in the long term.

The company has the intellectual capital to realize that potential. Dorfman, TCH’s chief executive officer, served as president of Host International — a billion-dollar, 40,000-plus employee company related to Marriott Corporation — from 1988 to 1992. TCH’s chief financial officer, Jack Shute, is a former Jabil Circuit executive.

TCH is also getting experienced help from outside the company. Dorfman and Shute have built a successful relationship with Chris Lewis, another former Jabil executive. And both Richard Frueh, former co-founder of GunnAllen Financial, and Robert Gries, of Gries Investment Funds, helped the company with their corporate launch in May 2008.

Those efforts combined have put TCH on an accelerated path for growth. After having operated five stores at the end of 2008, the company plans on increasing that number to at least 30 by the end of this year.

By Dorfman’s estimation, sustaining that growth will take TCH over $100 million in annual revenue by 2018.

While working to achieve that goal, Dorfman says the company will stay lean from a corporate standpoint. Currently, he and Shute handle as much of the workload as they can, “from opening the mail to doing financial statements,” as Shute puts it.

That keeps workflows smooth. “There’s no bureaucracy, that’s for sure,” adds Shute.

Beyond those two, TCH employs a marketing manager, one individual focused on raising capital, and three regional vice presidents for each city in which they do business.

For now, that’s it.

Keeping the corporate staff small helps Dorfman get a good look at the markets his restaurants are serving. He calls Tampa the company’s “softest” market, given recent economic conditions, while Houston represents the business’ strongest region.

When he first signed on with Five Guys, Dorfman didn’t expect to grow outside of Hillsborough County. But the financial partnerships he’s built in the past two years have changed his vision.

Whether he ended up with 15 stores or the 100 he has the rights to now, he says the long-term vision had to be there from the start. “You’ve got to be emotionally and financially committed,” he says.

TCH’s commitment to a long-term, large-scale growth plan could create a major player in the restaurant franchising business by the end of this decade.

— Alex Walsh