Mehdi Zarhloul didn't just chase opportunity. He built it into something lasting.

Long before Crazy Pita became a multi-location brand, before concepts like Salad Madness and Chicken Genius launched and before his company went national through crowdfunding, Zarhloul was just a 16-year-old kid from Morocco chasing a dream in America.

He still remembers the first time he saw the Statue of Liberty.

"When I came to the country and looked at the Statue of Liberty, I knew I was part of the American Dream," he tells Restaurant Influencers host Shawn Walchef.

For Zarhloul, it was more than a landmark. It was a symbol of everything he believed was possible in America.

Related: He Had $75 When He Immigrated to the U.S. as a Refugee. Then He Started a Business — and Grew It to $1.2 Billion.

Zarhloul arrived from Morocco as a teen, ready to work, willing to learn and determined to chase the dream that the statue stood for. His first stop? The restaurant industry, a world he knew nothing about.

"The only thing I knew about restaurants was you go and eat," Zarhloul says.

He started at the bottom, washing dishes in a small spot in Washington, D.C. He wasn't good at it. When they moved him to the........

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