The Inspiring Journey Of Balance Grille (Fast Casual Asian Fusion) (Ep 202)

publication date: Nov 6, 2023
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author/source: Jaime Oikle with Exec Chef HoChan Jang
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Running Restaurants | Ho Chan Jang | Balance Grille

 

In this episode of the podcast, Jaime Oikle of RunningRestaurants.com speaks with Ho Chan Jang (CJ), the Co-Founder and Exec Chef of Balance Grille.

In this fast-paced episode, the two bounce around to a number of key restaurant operations topics, including:

Be sure to check out the episode. Find out more at https://balancegrille.com, https://www.balancegrille.com/franchise, and https://www.runningrestaurants.com.

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The Inspiring Journey Of Balance Grille (Fast Casual Asian Fusion Restaurant) With Ho Chan Jang

Welcome to the show. Today I've got a great episode for you with Ho Chan Jang, co-founder and executive chef at Balanced Grille. CJ, welcome. Tell me a bit about your backstory. Where you guys are? How did the restaurant get started? We'll go from there.

The Story Of Balance Grille

We're based in Toledo, Ohio. We started Balance back in 2010 of February. Me and my business partner, Prakash, we were just newly grads. That's when the recession hit around that time. After we graduated, we weren't just, I mean, it was even hard to find just a regular office job. He and I just teamed up together. I've always wanted to open up a fast-casual Asian fusion restaurant that focuses a little bit more on just the ingredients and quality and just more of a clean eating.

I think there's a little bit of a stigma when it comes to Asian food in general. When you think about Chinese food, people usually think it's low quality, mom-and-pop style, and a little heavy on the oil and other ingredients. I wanted to do something that would differ from that. Either that or it's usually like sushi and such, which I think a lot of people are a little iffy about raw seafood and the price point as well.

We want to do something more affordable without sacrificing quality and flavor. I came up with that balance. We started back in 2010. Took about a year, a year and a half, to do a lot of research and just trial and error. We started back in 2009, came up with the finalized concept, and then we opened up our first location on February 22nd, 2010.

Did you think it would be a multi-location concept when you first started, or were you thinking, “Let's just do one of these and it'll be fun?”

We were younger back then, so I think we were in our mid-20s. I think I was 27 and he was 26 back then. When you're younger, you think everything is doable and easy, but obviously, it takes a lot. I mean, restaurant business, I have a background, my parents have a background. They still have a restaurant in Bowling Green. My mom thought I was crazy because she was like, “You're going to be working a lot.” Back then, I didn't care. What I wanted was to envision something perfect.

I thought it would be a home run from the beginning, but we learned through hardships and a lot of patience. We didn't really think it would be a multi-location. Back then, Prakash and I always thought, “If we're going to do something, let's do it right. Let's just give it our all.” Ultimately, we envisioned that we wanted to be like a big company. In the end, you can only dream about it, but you have to put the effort into it.

You got to do it. I think I remember whether it was on the website or part of the folks, your PR folks sent me some stuff. Tell me about the beginning. Something about putting stuff on credit cards and scratching and clawing. I mean, yes, it's not easy in the beginning.

That was part of our youth. I wouldn't want to say stupidity, but we definitely thought that it was, anything was possible. We just put everything into it. We scraped every credit card that we had. My mom had sent me a little bit of money because she wanted me to use it for when I got married, which never happened. I asked my mom, and I was like, “Instead of using that for when I meet someone for a wedding or whatnot, can I just use this now to open up this one location for our restaurant concept?"

She thought I was crazy, but she said, “Sure, if you really believe in it, if that's what you want to do as a career, then try it.” It wasn't a lot of money. It was probably a fraction of what we needed to open up our first location, but I was able to scrape that up and use a Home Depot credit line and use IKEA credit line for furniture, and we just made everything just barely work. We were fortunate enough to get a location even by a landlord that had faith in our concept and just gave a piece of their land to open up a brand new concept that they never even heard of to a couple of mid-20s, fresh-out-of-college kids. It was a big thing, but we were fortunate enough to find the location.

 

If you really believe in it, if that's what you want to do as a career, then try it.

 

Location

Let me ask you about that location because I also remember some notes about one of the early locations that maybe wasn't that great and then another location started getting the business that it really started taking off. It's hard to find the right location. How do you even think about that now?

We had our first location in Maumee, Ohio. It's a small, more of a business concentrated area. It was heavier on drink lunch and lunch rushes, but there was really nobody drinking dinner. Also, it was tucked in from other businesses. There wasn't any visible signage. It was really hard to find. The driveway was a little weird. You had to go all the way around to a U-Wee. The location itself wasn't ideal, but we tried to make it work. The first year we struggled. It was rough. We didn't pay each other even salary or anything for the first couple of years. Through the help of our parents and friends, we were able to just minimize our expenditure as far as our personal needs go.

We just wanted to continue to save up as much as we could and reinvest in the business. I remember the first few months, we were lucky enough to pull maybe $300 to $500 a day. That's when we had to revisit, hear out our customers, and just look for their feedback to see what we could do to improve our menu. Then when we opened up our second location in our second year, that's when we started blowing up. The location was ideal. It was a tier-one market. That's what we needed. People always say location, and that's a big chunk of it for sure.

It's a big part of the restaurant business. You're in the wrong spot,and you see the turnover at some locations where you're like, “Why would another restaurant go in there? It hasn't worked six times.” There are just some reasons that some spots don't work. I don't know how to explain it, and you can do a better job, but you went beyond it to grow your own stuff, and that, what's the word for aquaponics? Talk about how you've grown your own food to some extent, what does that look like?

Aquaponics

We wanted to, especially my business partner Prakash, who was very into aquaponics and hydroponic farms because we live in the Midwest. We were trying to get as much locally sourced produce as we could, but being in a four-season area and then when there's a drought or when there's too much rain, we were not able to get the produce consistently. Then we started thinking like at first we wanted to just get even just like purchase a little shipping container. Then just try it out and see what we could produce, and like stuff like microgreens that are full of nutrients.

We can definitely use that for a lot of variety of different things for garnishes. We want to start with that. Then we were lucky enough to partner up with one of our landlords in a downtown location. That's when he was building a residential area. Then he was revitalizing this one building specifically. We wanted to open up a location in downtown Toledo. Right next to it, it's in the same facility. He had about 8,500 to 9,000 square feet of vacancy. We thought that would be a perfect area and location for us to try this aquaponics farm.

We ended up opening that at the same time that we opened up Balance in the downtown Toledo location and it's been great. We supply a lot of leafy plants because you cannot really grow them just like rooted vegetables. It takes too long and needs too much space. So what we focus on is different varieties of microgreens like leafy greens, and we do push a lot of basil. We provide that to a lot of like fine dining restaurants in Michigan and Toledo. Also, we supply that for a few grocery stores as well.

I didn't realize it went beyond the own operation of your restaurant to produce the others.

Also, some food vendors as well, like Frog Holler.

Lessons From Mom

Let's go back to your mom for a second. I think you said she still runs a restaurant. What if you were to pull a couple of lessons from her into the restaurant business? What would you say she taught you or taught you to do or not to do?

To do definitely is just try to use all fresh ingredients. I was lucky enough that I was raised by a mom who really focused on just clean eating, healthy, eating healthy, and just do enough from scratch. That was the biggest thing. I don't even remember a single time my mom would ever just buy something out of a shelf and just reheat it and then serve it like one of these instant foods and things like that. She never believed in it. She thought it was just filled with preservatives and sodium. She always made from scratch three meals a day, even though she worked her butt off.

I remember she worked like seven days a week, and she probably easily pulled like 80 hours, 90 hours a week sometimes, but she still made time to give us a full meal from scratch, Korean food because we're Korean. That's why I grew up and I was spoiled in that way. That was one of the biggest things that was my takeaway is that. If you can produce something and make something delicious from scratch, that's the way to go. Just working hard. We're all workaholics, and I get that from my mom for sure. Just being able to believe in your concept and putting the work and effort into it is a big part for sure.

Running Restaurants | Ho Chan Jang | Balance Grille

 

That's great. It's amazing. It sounds like she certainly gave you that work ethic to get it done somehow, some way. She doesn't sound like she takes a lot of excuses. I'm guessing in life.

Definitely, not.

Something else that I am curious about. You guys take tech pretty seriously in the restaurant, and I think that a lot of brands in your space do because there's a lot of efficiencies. How do you think about it? What are you guys using that's maybe different or what are you learning in the tech space?

Technology

That's all per cash for me. I'm more of the ops and a creative mind when it comes to menu items and as a chef. PK definitely has the tech background and the knowledge for it. It's one of those things that really excites him. We have to stay on top of that because more and more as we get into the future, it seems like we're going to be more and more reliant on technology. It doesn't matter what industry you're in. You need that because in order to be competitive, but it is definitely efficient especially ever since COVID hit, we've been pushing a lot more curbside take-off and take-off.

 

As we get into the future, we're going to be more and more reliant on technology. It doesn't matter what industry you're in.

 

That's like, I don't think it's really more of an option anymore for a lot of like fast casual restaurants in this industry. I think it's more of a necessity. In order for you to stay on top of that and be competitive, you definitely need technology and the top-line technology that you can get. We always tell each other to customers too. It's we are a restaurant and we do sell food, but first and foremost, I believe that we are more of a tech business. That's how we like to present ourselves as well because it's equally as important as flavor, the customer experience, and the efficiency of it and technology plays a big role in that.

A lot of bad stuff came out of COVID, but some of the learnings that came out of it on the tech side have been fascinating because you would have never thought about five years ago pulling up to a restaurant and there's a spot in the parking lot for mobile orders. Someone might bring it out to you. Now it makes complete sense. Why didn't this exist before? It's obviously expanded the revenue opportunities for operators, whether that increased your day part or the mantra kitchen can do like, “Why don't we do some of this stuff before?” Bringing that stuff into the future, I think it's not going to go away.

That's definitely not. I think it's only heavier for sure.

Systemization

All that stuff is an important piece. Then, as you move to franchising, operation has to be systematized. It has to be a formula, for lack of a better word, so you can say to a potential franchisee. “We do boom and it produces X, Y, Z.” Talk about that systemization as you've gone from one unit to more and where you guys are now.

That thing there's two big components to that obviously it's about just streamlining everything so as we grew the location ever since we started introducing, will prior to franchising, we wanted to make sure that all these little pain points were taken care of. First and foremost is training. In order for us to open in different regions in different states that are far away from us, we definitely needed a level of different leadership groups that we can promote and be ready to pretty much take off over to a new location prior to the grand opening, train them efficiently and the right way.

We were very focused on pretty much promoting, working, and training these individuals who have been with us for a number of years. We are fortunate enough that we have a very low turnover rate and our average tenure is some of them and all of our leadership people are more than five years. I have some leaders that have been working with me for ten-plus years. Those are the guys that I heavily rely on because they know the way that me and Prakash handle our business and the way we work and our work ethic, and it just resonates with them and they understand what we're trying to achieve.

Having the right leadership, and having the right training program. We use a platform called ExpandShare, which has all of our videos and training. Everything could be digitized and people can do that, learn it remotely. Then we have on-site training as well. Then streamlining menu items and ingredients as well as finding the right produce vendors in any different areas so that you can still get the same product. Just having a good relationship with your master vendor is hugely important as well. Just streamlining all the recipes.

Running Restaurants | Ho Chan Jang | Balance Grille

 

That's a big part on my hand whenever I do create something new, and all these sauces and spice packs and things like that, we needed to streamline that and work closely with our partners to ensure that those things get shipped within a timely manner as well. Recipes and training are huge, and just having the same idea of what our ultimate goal is and finding the franchise partners to be able to go for that target and just our goal and achieve it is having a good relationship between it's hugely important as well.

Franchise

The turnover figures that you talked about, that is really important to have that consistency through your brand. That's a great highlight to have. Let's go to the franchise parts. Where you guys are? Are you looking geographically to go like this or are you just looking at a beep to different parts of the state or the country? What are you looking for in franchise partners? Talk about that.

There's definitely certain areas in the United States that we do really like. I do feel like a lot of people from the West Coast are moving more into the mountain states and then South as well. We really do like Southern areas, especially Texas, and then also mountain states such as Colorado. Then we're also looking into down south, from the Carolinas all the way to Florida. Then obviously we want to continue to focus on the Midwest, because that's our home, like Ohio, Michigan, maybe even Kentucky, Indiana, areas like that.

Right now, we did open our first franchise location in Denver last year, and we want to continue to grow that market and just create little clusters. Maybe in Denver, we would love to get like five to ten locations around there, including Boulder, Colorado. Early in this coming year, probably around between January and February, we are going to be open in Dallas. Dallas, we have an awesome franchise partner there, Roshan, and we're very excited to open up our first location in Wiley, Texas, which is near Dallas. We're super stoked about that.

We're trying to increase that area and just concentrate on that area for Texas. Then we would love to eventually open up down south of here. Michigan, we're actually getting ready to possibly finalize a deal in the Michigan area, in the Canton area, and then to Canton Detroit. We're going to open up another location in Cleveland, that's where we already have one there as a corporate store. Those are the main clusters.

Good. A lot going on there. You could see, you can appreciate the power of the cluster effect where people in a marketplace see the brand and then they're two towns over. I see the brand again. Just having one here, one there. Building out a cluster. Absolutely. Makes sense. Restaurant space is very competitive. There's obviously competition and quick service not so much in your niche of quick service. What do you think about the competitive aspect of it in terms of picking a location to be in? Do you want to be adjacent to some things, not adjacent to other things? It's a lot to think about.

As far as location goes, I think it's worth it to spend more on a location for the best location you can find than to find like tier 2 or tier 3 market. Then having to spend more time and effort into branding. We always try to go for the top-tier market areas for locations. As far as businesses go that would surround that ideal location, we do look for areas where that's heavy on like stores in general, such as grocery stores or gyms, and even schools in general. A lot of business, the more you're surrounded by where people hit that main area to do their main shopping, it's always a plus for us.

Even large department stores, just like anything from Walmart to Meijer to any big gyms, because we do have a lot of health-conscious customers as well. Those are the types of businesses that we do look forward to be adjacent from. We do love the corner locations, who doesn't, and high visibility and the highest traffic, the better, because you get a lot of visibility. That's marketing on its own without having to spend our own money on it. All that and we heavily on social media. That's what we rely a lot on to market our concept and advertise it as well.

Running Restaurants | Ho Chan Jang | Balance Grille

 

Social Media

Good. I wanted to talk about social for a second and maybe that will be our last main topic and we'll start to wrap up, but very different these days you guys, I'm guessing it's a younger, fun brand. You can do social in a different way than an old school, corporate type stuff. What do you guys do that's fun? Do you do TikTok? Do you do Instagram? How often do you do it? Is each location independent of itself? What have you got?

We do all that. It's all into one cluster, but we are focusing more on stuff like Instagram. We did use a lot more Facebook in the beginning. We still do that if there's any promotions that we can release and whenever there are a new menu item. We used to do a little bit more prior to COVID, we did a lot more fun videos and we even shot a couple of music videos and things like that. You want to keep it hip as much as you can and just make it a little bit of, add a little humor to it.

We're trying to revamp that as well, now that things have settled with these COVID things and whatnot. We're trying to refocus on more creativity because, at the end of the day, we don't want Balance to be a restaurant and a tech company. We want it to be more of a lifestyle brand. That was always our vision for me and Prakash. We're trying to layer these things in now, now that things have settled. We want to continue to focus on and release fun videos and products and lifestyle products as well. We want to get into a full circle as a business.

Let's do this. Think about it for a second and then no pressure. Parting thoughts and wisdom for other operators getting started, you've gone through the struggle, and you've seen a lot over the 10-year journey at this point. If someone were to come to you and say, “I'm going to get something started. I've been doing it for five years, I'm going to do my own thing.” What are some thoughts you might share with someone else in the biz?

I never see myself as someone that could give advice. I think we just learned as we went. I appreciate the thought, but at the end of the day, and I don't want to sound cliché either, but at the end of the day, you just got to work hard, you got to work your butt off. When you're opening up a restaurant, especially a new concept and you're not buying a pre-existing brand, you have to put in the hours yourself. You cannot expect yourself to just hire and outsource all these managers and leaders and expect your day to be a piece of cake.

Running Restaurants | Ho Chan Jang | Balance Grille

 

You’ve got to be so hands-on, and you’ve got to be very attentive, and you’ve got to be selective, and you’ve got to do your math, and you’ve got to do everything that you can in your power with the resources that you have to prepare yourself for the best and the worst. When there comes a day that you're not seeing the numbers that you wanted to, then it's time to get back to the drawing board, listen to your customers, and see what is missing. Then you’ve got to work with that. People say that customers are always right, but at the end of the day, a lot of parts that you’ve got to give what customers want.

That's what we did in the first two years when we weren’t pulling the numbers, we wanted to hear from our regulars and see what we can do to increase what people really want. Then we streamlined our menu, we finalized it, and then we just created these little subcategories like street tacos because then people wanted hand-held food. We focus on Asian-influenced tacos, buildables, and then snacks and bubble teas. We were able to create that through the help of our friends and families and just like hearing out from our customers.

You just have to be very attentive. Never lose focus on customer service. It's all about the experience from A to Z. The quality of your food and take pride in that and just use the best ingredients as possible without going over on your custom goods, of course, and hit that black box. It's a lot of layers of things, but all I can say is that you have to be the leader. As an owner, you have to show the type of work ethic and what you envision to your employees and they will follow you as long as you treat them good. That's what we focus on as well is the betterness of our employees as well and growing with them.

 

Never lose focus on customer service. It's all about the experience from A to Z.

 

Indeed, it's a business of literally hundreds and thousands of details and so forth to do it. In my closing notes, I'm going to send them to BalanceGrille.com and BalanceGrille.com/Franchise. Anywhere else you want to send them or mention them on your social channels?

You can follow us on Instagram as well at Balance Grille. You said it right, BalanceGrille.com and the Balance Grille franchise. Check it out and see what you guys think. I would appreciate it.

Perfect. CJ, awesome. They're from Balance Grille, so BalanceGrille.com/Franchise will get you to their franchise information. Check them out online. For more information on us, which is Running Restaurants. We do marketing and tech service people, all that stuff, RunningRestaurants.com. Check us out. If you do us a favor, like the video, put a comment, we'd appreciate it, all that stuff. Look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks, Cheff.

Thank you, Jamie. Bye.

 

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