Aug 11, 2014 8 Questions With: T.K. Pillan of Veggie Grill
Building leadership in the fast casual, vegetarian restaurant category, Veggie Grill, is making a distinguished effort to transform American attitudes toward food with “veggie proteins” and wholesome ingredients. Veggie Grill renders the impossible possible: nutritious food that is convenient, affordable, craveable and made 100% from plants. The company offers a menu featuring a variety of hot sandwiches and burgers, entrée salads, homestyle plates, shareable sides, daily soups and housemade desserts. As one who has never personally sought out vegetarian food, I can attest that the food is quite remarkable and absolutely crave-worthy.
Led by co-founders T.K. Pillan and Kevin Boylan, as well as CEO Greg Dollarhyde, Veggie Grill is headquartered in Santa Monica and currently has 25 locations along the West Coast in California, Oregon, and Washington with additional locations opening soon. In early 2013, they raised a Series D round and have continued to achieve steady growth. I met T.K. Pillan at a UCLA Anderson event in 2013, and he generously shares a bit of his founding story, plans for the future, and personal drivers. We wish their team success in conquering the rest of America and beyond.
Describe your (and co-founder Kevin Boylan’s) vision for Veggie Grill, one of the first in the category, upon inception in 2005.
When Kevin and I began working on Veggie Grill in 2005, our vision was to create a national chain of restaurants that would enlighten and satisfy consumers with delicious, convenient and wholesome meat-alternative menu choices. We are up and down the West Coast right now, but not fully national, so we still have work to do!
Talk a bit about the evolution to date, managing through rapid growth, and successfully raising several rounds of funding.
We opened our fist location at the end of 2006 in Irvine, CA, right across from UC Irvine. At that point we were crossing our fingers and just hoping people would give us a try. Luckily people did and kept coming back, so we were able to open a second location at the beginning of 2008 in El Segundo, CA. That was a very different type of location … when that one started doing well, we figured that we had something that worked. We wanted to grow quickly, but not too quickly given that we had never been in the restaurant industry before. So we took a moderate growth approach (and financing from friends and family), and grew to a total of seven successful Southern California locations by mid-2011. At that point, we thought we were ready to take the next step, so we recruited an experienced restaurant CEO and brought in private equity growth capital. At the start of 2012, we had 7 restaurants … by the end of 2014, we’ll have 29, so we’ve accelerated our growth quite a bit. Rapid growth brings new challenges, but that’s part of what we signed up for. If it was easy, everybody would do it!
Where do you hope to take Veggie Grill in the near / long-term future? What most excites you, thinking about the plans?
Our near-term goal is to become a national chain, which means starting to head east. We are still working on determining exactly when and where. It is exciting every time we open in a new market, to bring our unique food to that area, and continue to change perceptions of vegetarian food. It is also exciting to think that we are not too far away from our original vision, but we still have a lot of hard work to do.
What insights and lessons can you share as you’ve built Veggie Grill (challenges and risks of entrepreneurship and restauranteurship)?
One of the keys to any business, and which has played out for me at Veggie Grill, is to surround yourself with the right people. That involves not only partnering with people who provide complementary skillsets, but also more importantly, who share your vision and values. Luckily the stars aligned, and I was able to find some great partners to help launch Veggie Grill.
What is your favorite post-work destination?
I’d have to say the beach. Whether it is going for a sand run or playing volleyball, I’m addicted to outdoor work-outs, and the beach is about the best place around for that.
As a kid, what did you want to be?
Hmmm. I grew up totally into sports. I was a three-sport captain in high school (and played college baseball and basketball), so probably the first thing I wanted to be was a pro baseball or basketball player. But luckily my parents persuaded me to take my schoolwork seriously as well. My dad was an engineer, so I figured that might be a good bet, so I focused on engineering schools and got into MIT. But I discovered pretty quickly that engineering wasn’t my passion, and that I wanted to get on the business side of things. That led to me leaving my database programming related job and going to business school, after which I co-founded an Internet technology business in the mid 90’s. That was very exciting as we were transforming the way companies did business, so it was a great combination of my technology background and interest in business. After I sold my holdings in that company, I started to look at other technology-related opportunities … but along the way I became very passionate about solving the country’s need for delicious, convenient, wholesome food and the opportunity to show people how delicious vegetarian food could be, and so here I am. So I guess that is a long way of saying I never really knew exactly what I wanted to be, but by following my interests and passion, ended up where I am.
Where do you personally find inspiration?
I generally find inspiration in the power of capitalism and opportunities presented to us here in the United States to make a difference through business. While we have our share of problems and have gone through our ups and downs, companies specifically like Starbucks, Whole Foods and Chipotle inspire me in the way they have built great businesses while also using their platforms to move social consciousness forward around specific issues. They are not perfect, but I think they aim to make the world a better place, and I hope Veggie Grill can follow in their footsteps.
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