The sky is the limit with the re-discovered fast-casual segment. In the past few years, a light bulb has gone off in the heads of the entire restaurant industry as all have realized the better-for-you, better-for-the environment, customized food platform resonates and will continue to do so. Great minds in the restaurant industry have refocused, and none as drastically as Tim Murphy. He’s betting the farm on an absolutely crazy, perhaps brilliant idea. I hope it works for him.
He plans to turn shipping containers into restaurants. Talk about recycling! I interviewed him for a magazine article I was working on, and when he first mentioned containers, I typed it and went on with my questions. But the more he talked, the more I realized he was really talking about shipping containers turned restaurants. In early March he will debut the first unit of PHresh Kitchen in Orlando. There are so many intriguing elements to what he’s doing. I’ll pick a few.
- First, he’s not a novice. He has spent more than 30 years in the restaurant industry, including the CFO position for the Central Florida Applebee’s (franchisee in Orlando) as well as for Walt Disney World and the former Advantica Restaurant Group, which owned Denny’s, Hardees, El Pollo Loco.
- His healthy food emphasis includes whole grains, organic, non-GMO, low calorie, low sodium, cage-free, etc., wraps, sliders, smoothies and much more. The PH in PHresh stands for alkalinity, implying “good for you” in the same way alkaline water is good for you.
- The shipping containers can be outfitted and designed with a facing to look like the building it will be located near and be up and running in 3-4 weeks. The company has a warehouse from where the design magic happens. Water and electrical hookups are not a problem.
- The food isn’t actually made in the container restaurant. It is made in a commissary and delivered to the unit.
- Its website boasts, “PHresh KITCHEN™'s is positioned to become the worldwide leader in combining healthful, delicious food, with education and exercise.” Yes, there’s an education element via webinars and whatever else the company comes up with.
- It works with a staff of dieticians and nutritionists, including preventative-medicine expert Dr. David Katz.
There’s probably a lot more that could be said about it, but Murphy isn’t thinking of just opening a few of these and hoping they stick. He envisions becoming as ubiquitous as Subway—and there are more than 40,000 of those! The cost of entry into his dream is low. After all, it’s just a shipping container. He’s hoping to get athletes and other famous people to buy into this as an investment.
Will it work? I don’t know. How many people can easily think outside the shipping container box?
Let me know what you think.
Jody
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