America’s Mediterranean lunch bowl is booming as NAYA races toward 200 restaurants

When Hady Kfoury opened his first restaurant in Manhattan in 2008, he was already out of money. He had raised cash from friends and family to bring the Lebanese food he grew up eating to New York, but construction had cost more than he expected. He still owed money to his general contractor and resorted to buying equipment on eBay just to get the 54-seat restaurant open.

“It was a nightmare,” Kfoury told Fortune.

The nightmare eventually turned into 48 restaurants and counting. NAYA now employs more than 1,000 people, with average annual sales of roughly $3 million per restaurant and same-store sales growth above 10% yearly. Its footprint has grown more than 40% in each of the past four years, just as Mediterranean bowls have become a fast-casual lunch staple. Kfoury’s next target is 200 NAYAs by 2030.

The fast-casual restaurant he couldn’t open

Kfoury was born in Lebanon in 1981, during the country’s civil war. He remembers some days going to school and other days having to take shelter in basements as bombs fell nearby. After studying hospitality in Switzerland and working in New York with chef Daniel Boulud, Kfoury returned to Lebanon, only to live through another war in 2006.

“I’m like, all right, that’s not going to work,” he recalled. “I have to move to the U.S., start a restaurant, and take the flavors that I was raised on and do it over there.”

By 2007, he was back in New York looking for space for a fast-casual Lebanese concept in the city’s office-heavy neighborhoods. But landlords wouldn’t lease to him.

Kfoury had no track record as a restaurant owner, and after months of searching Midtown and Wall Street, he took a space on East 56th Street and Second Avenue. It happened to sit across the street from the aunt he’d stayed with during childhood trips to New York. The location wasn’t busy enough for the high-volume concept he envisioned, so Kfoury opened NAYA as a fine-dining Lebanese restaurant instead.

His mother and aunt became what he calls the “culinary mastermind” behind it. His mother was a talented cook who didn’t........

© Fortune