Hat Creek Burger Company President Drew Gressett on Scaling Quality
Drew Gressett loves a good cheeseburger. “American cheese and ketchup,” he says. “I’ll eat it for sure once a week, sometimes more. That’s been true since 2008.”
Gressett is the president of Hat Creek Burger Company, a restaurant with 26 locations across Central Texas. Gressett started Hat Creek in Austin as a food trailer, grilling and serving cheeseburgers himself under the hot Texas sun.
”I got into the restaurant business very much on the operations side,” Gressett says. “That’s how I cut my teeth. I always had this desire to start my own burger restaurant. After I graduated from the University of Texas, I thought, ‘Man, it’s either now or never.’”
With the help of family and friends, Gressett began selling fries, burgers, and milkshakes from his trailer in 2008. But since the beginning, he’s had an eye for expansion.
“I realized the trailer had limitations pretty quickly,” he says. “Having a three compartment dish pit to do your dishes in at the end of the night was a luxury for us. I realized I wanted to get into brick and mortar. I opened our first location in 2009 when we took over an old Arby’s building and retrofitted it to fit Hat Creek.”
Today, Hat Creek’s locations look distinctively different from an Arby’s: the restaurant is best known for its expansive playscapes and patios, spaces that give the whole family a place to enjoy a night out of the house. “We call it a family friendly burger patio,” Gressett says.
Thirteen years later, Hat Creek hasn’t stopped growing. With locations in Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Waco, and Temple, its menu now includes specialty burgers with homemade sauces along with buttermilk chicken flashers, breakfast tacos, sweet potato fries, tater tots, milkshakes, and fresh salads. Hat Creek prides itself on sourcing local, all natural ingredients, like cheeseburgers that are never frozen and pasture-raised eggs.
And, expansion is still in Hat Creek’s plans for the future. “We’re just trying to grow and build our team and continue to help everyone understand who we are and what it is we do,” Gressett says.
At Sysco LABS, we build the ecommerce platforms Sysco customers like Gressett use to shop for their restaurants’ ingredients online. Every day, we’re striving to push the restaurant industry forward through technology. We’re always curious to learn from the most innovative restaurants about what helps them succeed. So how do you scale a high-quality restaurant? In this interview, we asked Gresset to share three pieces of advice for restaurant owners scaling their success.
1. Decide what makes you unique
In 2011, Gressett began opening Hat Creek’s second brick and mortar location in West Lake Hills, just outside of Austin. The piece of property he chose had a few unique elements: Big trees, open spaces, and a patio off the main building.
”It presented itself as an opportunity, and we just walked through the door,” Gressett said. Immediately, the team understood a vision of Hat Creek as a place for families to spend time with one another around a patio, a playground, and a fresh hot cheeseburger.
“We said, ‘Okay, this feels right,’” Gressett remembers. ”To be a place for families to come gather, hang out, have a beer, sit on the patio, kids can run, that became our brand. That was our ‘ah ha’ moment.”
For Gresset, Hat Creek’s family friendly approach—which extends across the menu’s beer and wine selection as well as kids’ hot dogs and grilled cheeses—is a unique strategy for fostering community. “Our playgrounds provide such a neat spot for kids. To have that confined area where kids can be kids and run loose is fantastic for that age group. Then you’ve got our patios which are a great spot for adults to enjoy some adult conversation,” he explains.
As you’re growing your business, always keep an eye out for opportunities to create a unique experience.
2. Make a commitment to technology
In any restaurant business, technology is important. “So much has changed since Covid. We’ve got a great online ordering program and we have standard third-party delivery folks that deliver our food,” Gressett says. “We’ve launched a new website, and next we’re looking toward a mobile app.”
But for scaling a restaurant, investments in back office technology are also important. “We invested at an early stage in our back office and store management technology,” he says. “It’s important to find the right food costing technology, the right point of sale technology, and do your homework accordingly. It’s an ongoing conversation and it’s always changing.”
Because technology is always changing, Gressett says the most important thing restaurant owners can do is make a commitment to continue learning and investing.
”I’m the kind of guy that can’t turn on the computer, much less think through how to use tech to the advantage of our business,” he says. “But I think it’s important to find the right adviser or consultant or company that can help you innovate. The commitment to using technology is a great first step for earlier stage operators.”
3. Know your mission
At Hat Creek, Gressett says the mission is simple: Fellowship and fresh cheeseburgers.
“To us, fresh cheeseburgers is about the integrity behind the product,” he says. “We’ve got precious little people all day every day at all of our Hat Creek locations eating our food. To every extent possible, we try to source local, all natural products for these kids.“
That mission—offering families tasty meals to enjoy together—drives all of Hat Creek.
As the business scales, that mission remains at the forefront: “I think Hat Creek is a brand that should be in every community across the country. That’s a big vision for the brand, but it fills a niche as being a family gathering spot,” he says. “I think there’s a real opportunity to lean in to that.”
Want to learn more about the intersection of food and technology? Explore careers at Sysco LABS today.