In Charleston, Thomas Hall recalls having a similar desire to hold on to the family beginnings of his restaurant group, Hall’s Chophouse, which currently owns 10 restaurants in the South, including Columbia, Greenville and Nashville. When his late father, Bill Hall, opened the first restaurant in 2009, Hall said, everyone pitched in.

“It was a real family affair — my brother, me, my sister and my grandmother were here once,” said Hall, who now serves as general manager of Hall’s Chophouse Charleston. But unlike Souvanna, the Halls family believed that getting their name out there outside the Palmetto State was an opportunity to “expand our concepts.”

While Hall acknowledged that maintaining family values ​​as the restaurants expand and franchise will be challenging, he is excited about the opportunity to share the Halls’ personal and culinary missions with a wider audience.

“We light that candle and then pass it on to someone else,” Hall said. “Then they light up their people and grow in their city community.”

Start small and scale

According to Hall, the path to successful expansion is not always easy.

“You grow it and expect the same thing, the same taste, the same quality and consistency,” he said. “But it takes a long time to grow it.”

The team at Hall’s Chophouse, like other family-run restaurants opening new locations, has had to be careful not to lose sight of its values ​​as the brand has grown. Hall said the secret to maintaining the restaurant’s original image is “communication.”

“It’s about setting expectations and goals for people,” he said. “(The Halls) are big believers that you should catch people doing something right and constantly praise them for it. And that’s how we like to run our business.”

Hall recalled feeling “overwhelmed” with each new restaurant. “I always feel guilty that I can’t be at every location all the time because I just love it,” he said.