Apóla Greek Grill
Posted by estiator at 9 November, at 11 : 31 AM Print
eatapola.com
Restaurant Spotlight By MICHAEL KAMINER
We’ve had burger wars and chicken battles. Are gyros the next frontier for a fast- casual food throwdown?
If Yianni Kosmides has his way, they might be. Kosmides, 35, and his brother, Stefano, 37, launched Apóla Greek Grill five years ago. The Irvine, California, restaurant’s mission: Nothing less than serving “the most authentic gyro you can get without buying a plane ticket,” as Apóla’s slogan proclaims.
“Apóla started because we didn’t like that beef and lamb gyro were getting presented as actual gyro,” Yianni Kosmides, the brand’s CEO, tells Estiator. “We couldn’t find authentic chicken or pork gyros anywhere. So we decided to build a restaurant for ourselves.”
Anomalous to some Americans but instantly recognizable to Greeks, Apóla’s gyros stuff proteins, tzatziki, tomatoes, and onions—and, most critically, French fries—into warm pitas.
“For some, it’s a brand-new concept, and there’s a lot of training for customers about what ‘truly authentic’ means,” Kosmides says. “We get a lot of, ‘My grandfather’s Greek, and this isn’t what we had when I was there.’ Yes, but that was 25 years ago, probably in a tourist spot. Where locals go, you get hand-stacked chicken or pork with fries in the sandwich. People think it’s a California thing. Actually, no, it’s a Greek thing, and how it’s supposed to be.”
The concept has been a smash hit. After operating two California locations, the Kosmides brothers will open their first franchised location this fall. And plans call for many more Apóla Greek Grill locations—eventually. “We are deliberately taking it slow,” Kosmides says. “We don’t want to rush, and we’ve actually turned down some franchise requests. We have to make sure the product is where it should be.”
Greek elements in Apóla Greek Grill’s decor are “modern, and not tacky,” Kosmides says, with Greek/English “word-jumble” wallpaper, bright blue-and- white decor, and olive-branch bouquets along the walls. “We’re trying to keep everything as simple as possible. We’re using readily available materials for our spaces, along with the custom parts like wallpaper. We have a standard prototype floor plan that can go as low as 1,000 square feet. But it’s adaptable. Our first franchisee will be in a food court, and another is going into a vanilla shell.”
In the kitchen, like- wise, Apóla Greek Grill is keeping everything simple, Kosmides says. “It’s the key if you want to scale and grow. We’re using standard vertical broilers and electric knives. We can train someone to work the front line in 30 minutes. Since day one, this concept was designed to scale.”
Total unit costs for Apóla Greek Grill franchises range from $98,000 to $549,000, including a franchise fee of $37,500. Franchisee fees start at $37,500 for one unit, then $56,000 for two units, $75,000 for three units, and $15,000 for each additional unit after that. The ongoing licensing fee is 6 percent.
The Apóla team anticipates opening three or four restaurants in 2023 and five or more in 2024, with the focus staying on Southern California but potentially reaching more parts of the state, as well as Nevada and Arizona. The Kosmides brothers also plan to open two “purely ghost kitchen” locations of Apóla Greek Grill in Los Angeles County to service third-party and delivery orders.
Along with signature gyros, the menu features halal-certified meats as well as new offerings like Greek street fries and a meatless gyro. Traditionalists will also find staples like dolmas, falafel, avgolemono soup, and Greek salad. Spreads are made fresh, in-house, daily, Kosmides says.
Kosmides and his brother should know what “authentic Greek” looks like. Raised in their father’s ancestral home of Thessaloniki, they grew up “back and forth” between Greece and the San Francisco Bay area, where their mother’s Greek American family ran restaurants. “Our summer vacations were spent busing tables or working the register,” Kosmides says.
The aha moment for Apóla Greek Grill came in 2005. The brothers were back in California to study at USC’s Marshall School of Business. “We would ride around on our bikes for 45 minutes to find places that were highly disappointing by Greek standards,” Kosmides says. “We would always say, ‘Well, a truly authentic Greek place would do this or that.’” After years of development, Apóla Greek Grill launched in 2017.
While their father, Dimitri, is no longer in the restaurant business, “he’s always there,” Kosmides says. “We talk through issues with him, and he has an advisory role.” While the family has sold many of the restaurants they launched and built across Southern California, the brothers still own two branches of their retro-themed Mr. D’s Diner. “We always say we thought we’d seen everything, and then something new happens at one of the restaurants,” he says with a laugh.
That includes many happy moments as well. “We’ve had people come up to us in tears, saying, ‘Thank you for finally opening something authentic,’” Kosmides says. “We want people to close their eyes and feel like they’re in Greece.”
