Before something becomes an asset, a platform, or a strategy, it has to become a habit. And it's exactly why this conversation matters for allocators, investors, and operators alike. On this episode of Dakota Live, Robert Morier sits down with Chris Doody, founder of Piada Italian Street Food, and Lance Juhas, the company's CEO, to go inside one of the most disciplined growth stories in American fast casual. For the investment salesperson: This episode gives you a rare, tangible example of what real unit economics, capital discipline, and scalable growth actually look like inside an operating business — the kind of concrete, story-driven language that cuts through in a client meeting and makes abstract investment concepts suddenly stick. For the allocator: Piada is a live case study in what separates brands that compound from brands that collapse under their own growth — and the conversation around capital partnership, time horizon, and margin versus guest experience maps directly onto questions you're already asking every manager that sits across the table from you. The numbers tell the story: a first store that cost $600,000 to build and did $2.7 million in its first year. 62 corporate-owned locations across multiple states. 29 consecutive quarters of positive same-store comps. Average unit volumes of $2.5 million. And a planned growth ramp of 15 new stores this year, scaling to 30 annually. But the real conversation is about what the numbers don't show — the decisions behind them. Chris and Lance break down how they think about site selection, unit economics, people discipline, capital deployment, and the one mistake they've watched destroy otherwise great restaurant brands: growing for the sake of growth. For allocators and investors, this is a live underwriting exercise on a real business with real feedback loops. No quarterly narrative smoothing. No managing to guidance. Just lunch and dinner, every day, in markets that tell you immediately whether you got it right. What we cover: • How Piada went from napkin concept to 62 locations — and why they stayed in concentric circles instead of chasing coasts • Unit economics: what makes a great Piada location and how they evaluate new sites • The crab cakes story: what happens when a public company starts managing to margin instead of managing to the guest • Capital discipline vs. growth pressure — and how Chris things about unchecked expansion • AI, loyalty programs, and how a million-subscriber app was built entirely in-house From a test kitchen in Columbus to a national inflection point — this is the blueprint.
