About Phillip Frankland Lee
Phillip Frankland Lee is the co-owner and executive chef of Scratch Restaurants Group, the Michelin-starred hospitality company he operates with his wife and executive pastry chef Margarita Kallas-Lee. The group includes Sushi by Scratch Restaurants, Pasta|Bar, NADC Burger, and Shokunin, with locations across California and a growing national footprint. Lee is a Top Chef Season 13 competitor, San Pellegrino Young Chef 2015 finalist, Zagat 30 Under 30 honoree, and Food Network record holder for most consecutive competition wins. This is his third appearance on Chef’s PSA.
Episode Overview
In this episode, André Natera sits down with Phillip Frankland Lee for the third time to go deep on how he actually builds and scales restaurant concepts with minimal capital. His argument is direct: you can open a restaurant for $10,000 or less, break even in 60 days, and scale that model to 32 locations if you keep the footprint small, the staff lean, and every concept focused on one core product. He backs it up with specific numbers and operational decisions rather than generalities.
They cover the organic growth of NADC Burger from free pop-ups to multiple locations, the conversion of a Pasta|Bar location into a 22-seat boutique steakhouse, Lee’s open world RPG framework for handling adversity, hard lessons from risky partnerships, and a detailed debate on homage versus originality in culinary culture. The episode also covers the ethics of the fancy chef phone call, where the line between inspiration and copying actually sits, and a preview of Lee’s upcoming podcast Fire the Board and new Austin-area project.
Topics covered in this episode:
- How to open a restaurant for $10,000 or less and break even within 60 days
- Taking over already-permitted spaces and why it eliminates the buildout cost that kills most openings
- Why small tasting-menu formats scale better than large casual concepts and how the math actually works
- The organic growth of NADC Burger from free pop-ups to a multi-location concept
- Converting a Pasta|Bar location into a 22-seat boutique steakhouse
- The open world RPG framework for handling adversity and setbacks in a culinary career
- Hard lessons from sharks and risky partnerships and how to protect yourself
- The fancy chef phone call: its ethics, its uses, and what it actually accomplishes
- Where chef inspiration ends and outright copying begins, and why that line matters more now than ever
- Preview of his upcoming podcast Fire the Board and new Austin-area project
Guest
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