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A year after opening Isaac’s Poultry Market in Gaithersburg, founder Rob Gresham has signed a lease for a second storefront with a vision for much more down the road.
The new location of the roasted chicken restaurant is at Burtonsville Crossing at 15785 Old Columbia Pike — an Edens-led reboot of a 130,000-square-foot Montgomery County retail center. The restaurant, spanning 1,710 square feet with 25 seats inside and 20 more in an adjacent outdoor space, is set to open in early fall.
It’s significantly smaller than the 2,400-square-foot Gaithersburg location, but there's a good reason: Gresham, former director of operations for Cava Group Inc. (NYSE: CAVA), realized the restaurant’s menu of primarily gluten-free and halal roasted chicken, wings, sandwiches and salads lends itself to more carry-out than dine-in orders.
Gresham said he anticipates Isaac’s will pull in more than $2 million in revenue in 2024, with help from the new outpost opening later this year. He chose the location in part because it’s in a highly trafficked and densely populated location between D.C. and Baltimore. And he's familiar with Burtonsville — his first job was washing dishes at a restaurant across the street.
“Just the location I think will do very well,” Gresham said.
After he gets the second shop up and running, Gresham said he plans to follow the Cava model and expand across the country. He certainly has the experience. Not only was Gresham “employee No. 1” at Cava, which he helped grow from its earliest days until 2019, but he worked on Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc.’s 2006 initial public offering.
After he left Cava, Gresham opened a consulting firm helping restaurant owners grow their businesses, working with local, fast-casual chains such as Moby Dick House of Kabob and Rasa. He came up for the idea for Isaac's with his son during the early remote-learning days of the pandemic. They were just doing things to keep busy and Gresham suggested they create a mock business plan for a chain restaurant together. Later, Gresham picked the plan back up and decided to make it a reality.
With Isaac's, he said, “We’ll open up as much as we can in D.C. area — Maryland, D.C. and Virginia — and then work to grow a second market and just follow the game plan." At some point, though, he’d like to franchise.
“One, because I haven’t done that before and like the challenge of new things,” he said. “But also I think a lot of franchises get a bad rep. I think you can franchise properly.”
Gresham is already targeting the first quarter of 2025 for a third Isaac's location, site to be determined, and then he’ll look to raise more outside funding to propel the shop’s growth. To date, it’s raised about $2 million, including from some of the original investors in Cava, he said.
Burtonsville Crossing is anchored by Sprouts Farmers Market, Domain Fitness & Performance and T.J. Maxx. The center's site plan lists seven spaces out of 18 as available for lease.
