Tom + Chee, the locally owned purveyor of grilled cheese and tomato soup, has quickly and perhaps not so quietly become the fastest-growing grilled cheese empire in the U.S.
After starting in 2009 as a food tent on Cincinnati’s Fountain Square, the company opened its first brick and mortar store just under a year later. In the past three years, that number has gone from one store to six (three in Cincinnati and three in Louisville), with two more opening before the year’s end (Lexington and East Lansing). But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
In the first quarter of 2014, Tom + Chee will open 11 more stores and is currently under contact to open more than 100 locations in the next three years. The catalyst? Getting dunked in the Shark Tank.
In May of 2013, Tom + Chee was featured on ABC’s hit reality TV show “
Shark Tank.” Founders Trew Quackenbush and Corey Ward appeared on the show, when they won an investment deal with “shark” Barbara Corcoran after pitching expansion plans for their restaurants offering fancy comfort food with fresh ingredients. In the time since then, they’ve been inundated with franchise requests.
“We’ve had over 9,000 requests,” Ward says. “They’ve come from all 50 states, Canada, the Phillippines, Dubai and even the Czech Republic.”
In spite of their impending growth, Ward mentions that many things have and will stay the same.
“When we started this, we wanted to provide fun and inexpensive food, and that hasn’t changed,” Ward says. “And with lots of people getting into the foodie culture, we wanted to provide a fun option that would appeal to that but also didn’t exclude anyone by being too costly.”
“If there’s one thing that has changed it’s that now we actually have some money in the bank,” Ward laughs. “When we were still on Fountain Square, we were putting all of our own money into this, so it’s nice not to worry about being able to pay our rent.”
By Mike Sarason
Enjoy this story?
Sign up for free solutions-based reporting in your inbox each week.