From their early days to scaling to nine locations, Jason and Etkin share their journey of prioritizing quality, consistency, and culture to create a standout brand in the competitive restaurant landscape.

Key Highlights:

Scaling with a People-First Approach (1:07)

“Our biggest asset is people, and our biggest challenge is people.” – Jason Sobocinski

Jason and Etkin share how prioritizing team readiness, strong training pipelines, and empowering local leadership has been the foundation of their rapid expansion.

Lessons from Early Growth (2:25)

“We let the tail wag the dog—construction timelines dictated openings instead of team readiness.” – Etkin Tekin

The founders reflect on the importance of ensuring teams are fully prepared before opening new locations and how they’ve corrected this approach to set their stores up for success.

Obsessing Over Food Quality (6:41)

“Crispy, crunchy, juicy, spicy, delicious—that’s our mantra.” – Jason Sobocinski

Their three-day chicken preparation process ensures consistency and pride in every bite, creating a product that both staff and guests love.

Creating Consistently Great Experiences (9:08)

“We don’t just want to be consistent. We want to be consistently great.” – Jason Sobocinski

Jason and Etkin talk about the importance of delivering both high-quality food and exceptional service to build lasting guest loyalty.

Guest Recovery as an Opportunity (10:05)

“We call them opportunities—not mistakes—and use them to create deeper guest connections.” – Jason Sobocinski

They discuss their approach to guest feedback, from quickly responding to issues with tools like Ovation to turning errors into moments of connection and loyalty.

Empowering Teams with Unreasonable Hospitality (11:57)

“We give store leaders autonomy to wow guests in their own way.” – Etkin Tekin

Inspired by Unreasonable Hospitality, the team equips store-level leaders with budgets and tools to create unexpected moments of delight for guests.

Innovating Based on Feedback (18:22)

“Smaller portions came directly from guest feedback.” – Etkin Tekin

From menu updates to better accessibility, Jason and Etkin highlight how listening to their guests has helped shape Haven’s offerings.

Celebrating Success and Building Culture (18:34)

“Our shout-outs channel is one of the most active in Slack.” – Etkin Tekin

Through public recognition, team celebrations, and empowering staff, Haven fosters a culture of pride and positivity.

Who Deserves an Ovation? (20:05)

Jason and Etkin give a shoutout to their dedicated team members and to the book Unreasonable Hospitality, which has inspired their approach to guest and team engagement.

Follow Haven Hot Chicken:

Website: havenhotchicken.com

Instagram: @HavenHotChicken

LinkedIn: Haven Hot Chicken

For those passionate about scaling a restaurant with culture and quality at the core, Jason and Etkin’s journey offers invaluable lessons. Tune in to learn how they’ve brought consistently great hot chicken—and guest experiences—to the table!

Transcription

00:00:00:03 – 00:00:22:00

Speaker 1

Welcome to another edition of Give Innovation, the Restaurant Guest Experience podcast, where I talk to industry experts to get their strategies and tactics you can use to create a five star guest experience. This podcast is sponsored by Ovation, an operations and guest recovery platform for multi-unit restaurants, but gives all the answers without annoying guests with all the questions.

00:00:22:01 – 00:00:50:11

Speaker 1

Learn more at Ovation upcoming. And today I have two gentlemen who honestly, they sound like movie stars. They look like rock stars, and their food is just from the stars. It’s amazing. Jason Saab, Uscinski and Atkin Tech in the president and CEO respectively, and co-founders of the Booming Haven Hot Chicken, winners of last year’s Perfect Pitch competition. And they’ve just been exploding since then, doing some incredible things.

00:00:50:13 – 00:00:53:02

Speaker 1

Welcome to the podcast, gentlemen.

00:00:53:04 – 00:00:54:20

Speaker 2

Thank you for having us.

00:00:54:22 – 00:00:55:13

Speaker 3

Thanks for having us.

00:00:55:17 – 00:01:07:15

Speaker 1

So first of all, talk to me a little bit about your growth. I know Etkin, you and I talked about this recently at a trade show and it’s crazy to where you’ve been, to where you’re at. Talk to me about that.

00:01:07:17 – 00:01:42:16

Speaker 3

Yes, I think the first time we met in person was at a fast casual executive summit last year, and we had four locations in October of 2023. Since then, we’ve opened five units in less than a year for a total of nine. I think the foundation of our ability to grow has been investing in our people, building up that team pipeline and making sure that we have fantastic store level leadership, really strong training programs, establishment of a learning management system, and then having a fantastic tool that allows us to constantly monitor how we’re performing at each of the locations, which is where elevation comes in.

00:01:42:22 – 00:01:58:09

Speaker 1

That jump is really big as you’ve been looking at it. What are some lessons that you wish you could have gone back when you were your first location and said, Man Etkin, here’s what you should do differently in this to help grow.

00:01:58:11 – 00:01:59:23

Speaker 2

How long is this podcast?

00:02:00:00 – 00:02:01:19

Speaker 1

Yeah.

00:02:01:21 – 00:02:25:05

Speaker 3

Yeah, I’ll let Jason jump in as well. But I think that maybe not for the first location, but for the second and the third. One of the biggest lessons we learned was we kind of let the tail wag the dog. We allowed the construction and physical space timeline dictate when we moved forward with opening the location, when it should have been completely dependent on the readiness of the teams that were going to operate.

00:02:25:07 – 00:02:31:05

Speaker 3

I would say the single biggest learning that we’ve had and we’ve since corrected it and we’re much better at opening new locations now.

00:02:31:07 – 00:02:52:09

Speaker 2

Yeah, I’ll second with. It’s all about the people. You’ll hear us say this a million times. Our biggest challenge is people. Our biggest asset is people training our crew and making sure they’re at the level where we need them to be to do what we need them to do in order to hit the brand the way it has to be hit.

00:02:52:11 – 00:03:03:21

Speaker 2

That’s our biggest challenge. If I can go back in time to store 001 and do it all over again, I would just train five times more just to be more briefly. Training courses, everything.

00:03:03:23 – 00:03:36:17

Speaker 1

I went to a restaurant recently and I saw like the employee backdrop and it said like their training poster was in the background and it said something like Positivity is contagious or something. And the guy taking my order was one of the most grumpy is curmudgeons. And it was just like this juxtaposition of like, wait a second, I’m like so confused here because they obviously have missed something when that is the number one thing on their training poster.

00:03:36:19 – 00:03:45:15

Speaker 1

And this guy is cranky, right? Like, how do you prevent that? How do you train that out of people? How do you what do you look for when you’re hiring?

00:03:45:17 – 00:04:21:01

Speaker 2

I think that hiring for attitude over skill is paramount right now. Making sure that you have the right people coming in. One grumpy person can bring the entire staff down on a random day. We often talk about culture. Everyone talks about culture. We can’t talk about culture and then expect the culture to be in the store. On the ground level with the guest, we have to have certain standards that we set and then we have to let the leaders and the people who are in those stores on the ground review let them create their own culture.

00:04:21:03 – 00:04:47:00

Speaker 2

And by doing that, they’re going to adhere to it that much better. If you have that grumpy team member, eventually they’re going to get weeded out and probably pretty quickly because nobody wants to work with someone like that. Nobody wants to pool tips with somebody like that. We’re trying to create guidelines for culture and guidelines for attitude, but we can’t go in there and tell them, you know, command and control that you have to act a certain way.

00:04:47:02 – 00:04:52:15

Speaker 2

We can just set that standard and then they have to uphold it themselves and keep each other accountable.

00:04:52:17 – 00:05:12:11

Speaker 3

You know, we believe in clarity, competency and control at the store level. We want to give our store level leadership as much autonomy as they can so they are empowered to make decisions. Even going to legends, hospitality or team engagement budgets or the ways in which they’re allowed to own or given control over how they engage with their teams, what fits and what makes sense for them.

00:05:12:12 – 00:05:28:02

Speaker 3

There aren’t kind of catch all programs that we apply forced fun to forced fun is probably my least favorite part of my corporate career. And so one of the sentiments coming into running our own company was no forced fun. We’re going to do things.

00:05:28:03 – 00:06:00:04

Speaker 1

While the right I mean, that’s definitely one of those things. When I look at these different things that companies do to try to like be cool, but they’re like, but you have to show up. It’s crazy. I actually had someone the other day who did a big company party and they said, Hey, plus ones are invited. And this person actually sent him a bill for their plus one and said, Hey, you got to pay my plus one their hourly rate.

00:06:00:06 – 00:06:19:07

Speaker 1

And it’s like the point is like we’re here to grow together and, like, have more fun together. Not like this isn’t necessarily a work thing. This is like a people to people thing. And it’s interesting to see. I like that idea of you have a budget that the locations used to like engage with each other.

00:06:19:09 – 00:06:41:23

Speaker 2

Yeah, they get a monthly budget that they’re able to spend in any way they want. You want to go buy coffee or do you want to do save up your budget? We’ve had a couple of jams, save their budget over several months and then do a big gift for each of their team members at the store that it’s whatever you want to do or engagement to get people excited and into what they’re doing.

00:06:41:23 – 00:07:06:06

Speaker 2

I think a big part of this for us that’s worked really well is we’re obsessed with the quality of our food, obsessed with it. We’re obsessed with the texture crispy, crunchy, juicy, spicy, delicious. That’s our mantra. Our teams make everything in store. It’s a three day process to get the chicken from when it comes in raw to out the door in a bun for the guest.

00:07:06:06 – 00:07:26:22

Speaker 2

Right. They know how much goes into it. There’s a lot of pride in that process and there’s a lot of pride when we get great reviews, guest feedback. That pride is something that I can’t manufacture. They have to live it, be in it, see what it takes to put the product out the way it needs to be put out.

00:07:26:24 – 00:07:53:17

Speaker 2

And when they get feedback that it’s delicious and people love it, and to try it themselves or friends or family are into it, that’s something that you can’t really match. I mean, pride to me is maybe the number one thing for culture building. So as we watch our team members get involved in the process of making our food, getting it out to their guests and feeling that pride and doing that, that’s also a huge part of our culture and it makes people happy.

00:07:53:19 – 00:07:56:16

Speaker 2

Yeah, and that’s part of what we want to do as part of our mission.

00:07:56:20 – 00:08:21:19

Speaker 1

I think that what you bring up about being obsessed with the food is interesting because I’ve been to some places where it’s so inconsistent, both the food and quite frankly, the service, right person to person. And I think that the two things that you’ve talked about really are training the people. Right. To make sure that you get a consistent experience of service and obsession about the food to make sure there’s a consistent experience with the food.

00:08:21:21 – 00:08:44:05

Speaker 1

And Jason, you and I were in that room. I can’t remember what show that was. It was, see, that’s right. That was my 100th trade show I’ve been through with Ovation. Wow. So, yeah, which is like, I know people are like, do you do you ever work? And I’m like, No, I just see good food offered. But in that room, I don’t know if you remember, but there was a guy talking about trends.

00:08:44:05 – 00:09:08:04

Speaker 1

Talk about how the most important thing nowadays is consistency because guests want to make sure they’re getting what they’re paying for. Right. And I guess as you’re looking at your business and you’re looking at I love that we’ve talked about some different tactics to improve the culture which improve the guest experience. But are there any other tactics that you would say are helping you to improve the guest experience or improve that consistency?

00:09:08:10 – 00:09:39:15

Speaker 2

Well, I’ll just layer on quickly that I agree. Consistency is absolutely key, but I know a ton of businesses that are consistent. I want to be consistently great. Yes. And that’s even more important. We look at and trust me, we screw up. I would use a different word, but I don’t know if you bleep things out. We’re human, we’re growing, we screw up, we screw up a lot at times, especially when when things get piled on and I want to call it out.

00:09:39:17 – 00:10:05:14

Speaker 2

We call them opportunities. Elevation has been a great way for us to get the feedback on that. We also use Google, we use Yelp, we jump on, we respond, we learn, we humanize. That’s our biggest way of learning right now is getting the reviews from our guests and going out there and sharing them with our entire team. We’re not hiding them, going out there and saying, okay, we recognize we did not deliver what we were supposed to do.

00:10:05:20 – 00:10:30:07

Speaker 2

The first thing, we apologize. That’s the second thing. Typically, if it’s something that’s pretty bad, we’re not asking for your money, So we’re going to give you a refund because this is about building a brand, not about making money. At the end of the day right now for us and always and then try to reconnect. And what we’ve found is that when we can do that connection, it does again humanize us from being just like this brand.

00:10:30:09 – 00:10:50:02

Speaker 2

Now we have nine stores. People consider us big. You and I know we’re not very big, but we we connect. And it’s a person it’s one of the general managers or an AGM on the other side connecting and saying, I am a person. I want to recognize that we screwed up. I want to refund you one more. So I’d like to get you back in.

00:10:50:04 – 00:11:09:15

Speaker 2

I’d like to figure out a way that we can make this right so you can see what we’re meant to be doing. Sometimes that ends up being better for us. Sometimes one of these total mess ups ends up creating a guest that drops the other brands that they’re going to because they’ve now gotten to know us on a different level.

00:11:09:15 – 00:11:27:10

Speaker 2

And I think that’s the opportunity that really makes it special. That’s one of the best tools we have because we want our core guests to come more often. We want repeats. This business has high churn. Everybody does in the QSR and we want to reduce that. And a great way to do that is just to connect with our guests now.

00:11:27:12 – 00:11:57:11

Speaker 3

I think recovering guests and again, this happens at the store level, you know, monitored by district managers and our co-founders as well. But we also want to give our teams the opportunity to make good or great experiences just completely over the top. Jason, last year had us all read Unreasonable Hospitality. We’re big, we’ll get to our fans. It’s important to remember the lessons that are distilled in that book and it’s something that we’re spread to the store level leadership teams and we literally, we have a button in our point of sale system called Legends and Hospitality.

00:11:57:15 – 00:12:22:16

Speaker 3

And this is an opportunity when our our guest experience lead the person at the register really connects with the first time guest or a repeat guest. They have the ability to do something for them. They can give them a banana pudding if they haven’t had one before. If they’re talking through what heat level a guest should be getting for their sandwich, other attendees, they’re able to provide an extra tender for them at the other heat level that they were unsure about.

00:12:22:18 – 00:12:43:23

Speaker 3

Just to give that added spark and connection that we’re not just a transaction, we want that full experience as a QSR, that interaction opportunity is often only 60 to 90 seconds, right? And so we want to make it impactful and we want to make it last. And so again, I really think a lot of it comes down to empowering our teams to make decisions that we want them to make.

00:12:44:04 – 00:12:49:02

Speaker 3

We’re not afraid of giving away product in order to make the guest really happy. Like that’s such a no brainer.

00:12:49:04 – 00:13:12:05

Speaker 2

We actually track comps and if your store is below, like what was the last one we did, it was like below 5% on comps. I’m going to have a discussion. There’s no way you were perfect. No, you had opportunities that you missed the opportunity. The mistake to correct something if you’re not comping at all. What’s going on? Something’s not catching.

00:13:12:07 – 00:13:18:10

Speaker 2

So we do look at those comps on a weekly basis and talk to our gyms and gyms and say something that’s.

00:13:18:12 – 00:13:25:08

Speaker 1

If we say 5%, What do you mean like 5% of transactions, 5% of revenue? Like how do you look at that?

00:13:25:10 – 00:13:44:08

Speaker 2

So we’re typically looking at transactions like overall transactions in a week. I know that there’s opportunities out there. And this my mind, it’s marketing. This is brand building. This is how we I’d rather pay it that way and in kind to someone then go out there and spend big money on that at home.

00:13:44:10 – 00:14:05:14

Speaker 1

Yeah, I’m thinking about this. Just yesterday I went to a burrito place and they were like, Hey, here’s free chips and Glock. And I got home and literally the burrito was wrong. Like they gave me the wrong burrito and I was so mad. But then I was like, But they gave me chips and Glock, and it was almost like it’s like, did you know, like, were you planning on screw this up?

00:14:05:14 – 00:14:12:07

Speaker 1

Because, like, I literally would go live my bad review, but they gave me free chips and go back. And so anyway, I had that for I like to say.

00:14:12:09 – 00:14:36:09

Speaker 2

I like they gave you something you didn’t expect. We talk about unreasonable hospitality, but in that book, and this is something we preach all the time, service is when you get something you paid for, your expectation is it’s a product, it’s a service. This is what I get asked. Quality Hospital quality is when you receive something that you didn’t expect, that’s when you make that crease in someone’s brain, right?

00:14:36:10 – 00:14:53:09

Speaker 2

That’s when it sticks. That’s when it becomes something where they’re talking about, I had this experience where I got free chips and go back. Maybe next time you talk about that, you won’t mention that the burrito was wrong because you’re like, It’s okay. Then. Like the fact that you’re talking about it now, you didn’t plug whoever the burrito place was.

00:14:53:09 – 00:15:03:08

Speaker 2

But in general, if you’re out there like this is how we market, we exceed expectations. We blow minds of our guests. So they’re talking about what we do to others.

00:15:03:10 – 00:15:09:05

Speaker 1

And have the burrito been right? I’d be mentioning this location. You did do a lot.

00:15:09:07 – 00:15:11:21

Speaker 2

But you’re making me hungry. I want a burrito now.

00:15:11:23 – 00:15:38:10

Speaker 1

Well, I see. The other thing, too, is that your team obviously cares. I mean, you respond to every single piece of feedback, innovation, and your score is incredibly high and your response times are incredibly low. And so I think one of the questions I have is like, how has Ovation been helpful for you guys? Because you’ve obviously created a culture that cares and like in the words of Will Gooder, like you’ve made it cool to care about.

00:15:38:10 – 00:15:42:15

Speaker 1

How has Ovation helped in has helped Haven?

00:15:42:17 – 00:16:07:18

Speaker 2

I think it comes down to what I was saying before, the pride on a work that goes into the product and so when we get a review or an opportunity, we’ll call it back from Ovation saying, I got home and there’s no sauce in the bag. It’s like, you know what are chicken is delicious, but if you have it without our ranch, you’re really missing something.

00:16:07:20 – 00:16:28:18

Speaker 2

So I want to use the word, but I can empathize because I’ve gotten orders and they’ve not had sauce in the bag. And it it pisses me off. I’ve got three kids. Sometimes I’ll make an order and it’s wrong. And some of my kids are young, so that ends their entire evening in like, this entire your entire evening?

00:16:28:20 – 00:16:52:03

Speaker 2

Exactly. So I get it. I get how disappointed can be our products. Not the cheapest either. And so when we fail on a quality or, you know, we fail on putting something in the bag, it really hits. And that pride comes in When the GM and GM and used to be literally me responding to every single ovation. And then around store three, we said, okay, that’s insane.

00:16:52:05 – 00:17:12:16

Speaker 2

We have to do other things. And now we put it in there in the hands of the leaders of the stores. And I think it’s better because they can literally say, It’s me, Melanie, I’m at store one and I’ve had people respond, This is I and we all right back. No, it’s me, Melanie, And I watch all of these because I’m obsessed with this.

00:17:12:18 – 00:17:35:16

Speaker 2

So I’ll jump in and say, Hey, it’s Jason. I’m one of the co-founders. Melanie is the GM. And then people will say, I had a bet with my wife that you guys were I. And it’s really hilarious. I think they’re jumping in and they’re responding quickly for a couple of reasons. Number one is pride. They have pride in what they’ve created in the store, and they want to make sure that, hey, I can jump on this opportunity.

00:17:35:16 – 00:17:56:13

Speaker 2

I can create a better guest experience, I can fix. We’ve done wrong, but also to be out there and honest, like we use an aggregate ovation score as part of our bonus for our team leaders. And we look at things because sometimes people will give a bad score because they didn’t like the way something was priced. Okay, that’s okay.

00:17:56:13 – 00:18:12:23

Speaker 2

We’re not for everyone. We have to recognize that too. But attaching it to your bonus is a really great way for us to say this is really important. I guess first, like every day it’s guests first. That’s been the tool. Yeah.

00:18:13:00 – 00:18:34:04

Speaker 3

Yeah. I think making sure that again, all of our store level leadership, their bonus is predicated on innovation ratings but also on developing our teams. Right. And allowing them to grow within the organization. So making sure that they’re getting people into different training roles and leadership roles. And then I think the other thing that can can contribute to that pride is that we also we try to celebrate success as often as we can.

00:18:34:06 – 00:19:06:08

Speaker 3

One of the most active Slack channels that we have as an organization is the shout Outs and Celebrations channel. We talk about the guest wins that we have every day. Will somebody will drop a screenshot of the latest phenomenal feedback that we’ve gotten from a guest and that fuels the team. Our monthly all hands. Also, we celebrate that success and we walk through and celebrate stories that will go dozens and dozens of reviews in a row of five stars and they’re competitive with each other and really want to get really high on average ratings.

00:19:06:10 – 00:19:22:15

Speaker 3

And so in addition to giving them the ability to do something about it when a recovery is needed, but then also recognizing the hard work that their team puts in and the passion and commitment they have for delivering a great guest experience alongside the premium product that we offer.

00:19:22:17 – 00:19:30:09

Speaker 1

Awesome. I love that. And by the way, have there been any like changes that you’ve made at Haven Hot Chicken because of feedback that you’ve received?

00:19:30:11 – 00:19:47:18

Speaker 2

We’re let’s see, we’ve taken menu items away that people really like and we’ve gotten feedback to put them back on. And so we’re working on some of that. But we have a pretty straightforward and simple and small menu we want to do. Yeah, very little things and do them really, really right. That’s been the formula.

00:19:47:18 – 00:20:09:06

Speaker 3

So yeah, I would say that we just recently overhauled our menu and it was a direct result of thousands of data points across elevation, you know, across the accessibility of our menu. And so we underwent probably six or eight months of menu testing, iterating and developing a new format for our menus so that we have a couple of new product offerings.

00:20:09:06 – 00:20:22:16

Speaker 3

As a result, we serve premium food at premium prices and large volumes. And we’ve had folks that are we absolutely love your food. Like I would like to eat it more often. I need a smaller portion size.

00:20:22:20 – 00:20:23:17

Speaker 1

I interesting.

00:20:23:22 – 00:20:25:18

Speaker 3

yeah, that was something great for us to incorporate.

00:20:25:18 – 00:20:27:03

Speaker 2

That was Yeah, that’s true.

00:20:27:06 – 00:20:30:13

Speaker 3

That’s something that we absolutely learned through getting review probation.

00:20:30:15 – 00:20:41:13

Speaker 1

Well, you guys both of you. And the brand is just so awesome and it’s an honor to work with you. And I think what you do is incredible. How can people find and follow you and your brand?

00:20:41:15 – 00:20:54:20

Speaker 3

Yeah, we’re stuck at Haven Hot Chicken on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook. We’re not on Twitter, so don’t look for us, for us, but we certainly come visit one of our nine locations in Connecticut.

00:20:54:22 – 00:20:56:19

Speaker 1

Where like nine going on 90, I.

00:20:56:19 – 00:21:01:07

Speaker 2

Hear nine going on 90 and look out for some haven locations out of Connecticut.

00:21:01:11 – 00:21:21:05

Speaker 1

So nice. Love that. Well, gentleman for caring enough to be consistently great and caring enough to connect with the guests. Today’s ovation goes to you. Thank you so much for joining us on giving ovation. Thank that. Thanks for joining us today. If you like this episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite place to listen.

00:21:21:11 – 00:21:38:02

Speaker 1

We’re all about feedback here. Again, this episode was sponsored by Ovation, a two question Sims based actionable guest feedback platform built for multi-unit restaurants. If you’d like to learn how we can help you measure and create a better guest experience, visit us at Ovation App.com.