Restaurateur finds parking lot success
posted by admin in Home DepotSome people envision opening a restaurant in their neighborhood or in their hometown. Jason Seyler’s vision was the parking lot of Home Depot.
It turned out the vision made a lot of sense.
Seyler’s Gigunito’s sandwich shops have 13 outposts in Home Depot and Lowe’s parking lots in Virginia and Pennsylvania, serving contractors and customers lunch and breakfast during store hours.
Seyler was a former sales executive who decided he wanted a more charity-centered focus to his work after seeing his friend John Gigunito’s son succumb to leukemia. A longtime cook, Seyler decided to get into the restaurant business and to make his company a Christian-based organization that hires store managers from poor or disadvantaged backgrounds. Seyler’s plan was to create a stand-alone restaurant that served food a step above the hot dog carts often found at stores where many contractors shop.
“I would see the little silver carts in front of Home Depot, and they don’t have much of a menu — maybe hot dogs, juice, a candy bar,†Seyler said. “So there was some potential there.â€
Some of his locations are stand-alone restaurants, but most are at Home Depots or Lowe’s, according to Seyler. The food offerings include items such as roasted portabello mushroom, beef meatballs, teriyaki and jerk chicken; a homemade sausage sandwich and Philly cheesesteak are two favorites, as well as breakfast sandwiches using eggs and Virginia ham. Items are made on-site using fresh rather than premade ingredients, he said.
Locally, Gigunito’s restaurants can be found at home repair stores in Falls Church, Merrifield, Fair Lakes and Annandale, and he expects to soon expand into the Greater Baltimore area. It also has outposts in Virginia Beach and parts of Pennsylvania. The stores he has relationships with give him first refusal at some area locations before allowing other vendors to work there, he said.
“Right now we serve about 1,000 guests a day,†Seyler said; though he would not disclose exact numbers, he described the company as doing a “couple of million†in revenue per year.
Most store managers have attended a two-year culinary school, Seyler said.
The addition has been a boon to Home Depot, according to Bill Schuell, a regional manager for the company.
“I saw it as a potential competitive advantage to have a food store here, especially in the morning,†he said. “One of the hidden advantages is … our associates no longer have to leave the premises on their lunch breaks to have a good meal.â€
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