First Watch CEO Chris Tomasso for years heard “breakfast was dead.” People said it when fast casual emerged. During—and after—the pandemic. But like over-reaching statements tend to be, it was the terminology and scope expiring; not the category itself.
During this time (Tomasso joined First Watch in 2006, the same year Twitter launched), the brand ballooned from 66 to 681 restaurants and more than doubled its average-unit volumes to $2.3 million. As First Watch approached going public in September 2021, it tallied 28 consecutive quarters of positive same-store sales.
So, clearly, it wasn’t a floundering space.
“Breakfast is not dead,” Tomasso said Thursday during First Watch’s inaugural investor day in Boston. “Though, the way breakfast has been presented to the consumer for decades, that’s probably dead.”
“The segment has been disrupted by us.”
First Watch, gathering the investor community in person for the first time since its IPO, shared long-term targets and unraveled how it’s managed to become the fastest-growing full-service chain in the country, and do so while many of its competitors inched along or retracted.
The brand guided same-store sales growth of 2–4 percent through 2028 alongside total revenue lift of 10–13 percent. It expects the latter to outpace G&A expense growth and for adjusted EBITDA to scale 15 percent-plus. Additionally, First Watch projects positive free cash flow starting in 2027, with increases coming yearly after.
“Breakfast,” widely speaking, is not a term First Watch typically taps to explain its positioning. Where it grabbed share and ran out front, Tomasso said, is in the “daytime dining daypart.”
Legacy family dining chains and 24-hour “greasy spoon diners,” he explained, no longer offer what consumers search for.
“They seek freshness, healthy options, quality ingredients, and a bright, welcoming space,” Tomasso said. “And servers who truly enjoy what they do.”
It’s a universe First Watch came to define, centering on breakfast, brunch, and lunch occasions, serving customers from morning through mid-afternoon.
Three of the top five and four of the top 10 full-service chains in America dish out breakfast and operate during the hours First Watch does (they also operate when it doesn’t; First Watch runs a one-shift model that closes the doors at 2:30 p.m.).
It’s coverage of some 5,000 units. Tack on bakery-cafes and other quick-service peers and the number hikes to nearly 9,000 and “millions and millions of visits.”
First Watch views this field as a chance to take its “Own the Morning” North Star and grab additional share through a category it essentially created.
Since 2021, “daytime dining” appreciated a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9 percent. Legacy family dining, however, slid 1.6 percent, per Placer.ai data.
“It all comes down to relevancy, and daytime dining is leading the way,” Tomasso said. “And while daytime dining is winning breakfast, we are winning daytime dining.”
First Watch, according to the same data, owns 75 percent of this particular space. Over five years, it’s grown by 246 restaurants. Eggs Up Grill added 46, Another Broken Egg and Keke’s 23 apiece, Snooze 12, and Cracker Barrel (–8), IHOP (–35), and Denny’s (–194) slimmed.
First Watch is more than two times the size of its next three largest daytime dining competitors combined.
As much as Thursday’s presentation was about outlining what’s ahead, it was also recognition of how the past five years put it in this pole position of strength.
The brand’s new-restaurant openings have generated cumulative net sales of $1 billion since going public. First Watch is serving, on average, 29 million more people annually than five years ago.
A phrase Tomasso shared during investor day was, “strategy set, results delivered.”
When First Watch peeled back the curtain in 2021, ending its three-decade run as a private enterprise (it’s had three equity partners in its history), it blueprinted mid-teens revenue growth. That turned out to be 18.7 percent, from $730 million to $1.2 billion.
The company promised restaurant store growth of 10 percent. That ended up 10.1 percent.
It hinted G&A leverage, which it did, by 110 basis points.
Same-store sales expansion was touted at 3.5 percent—a number it hit.
Adjusted EBITDA, mid-teens. That’s been 20.4 percent
AUV expansion, while not a stated target, bumped from $1.8 million to the aforementioned $2.3 million, with Year 3 targets of $2.8 million.
“Our success is built upon a foundation of operational excellence that’s been a hallmark for us since our inception,” Tomasso said. “We are operators first and foremost, and we’re really good at it. This is achieved by employing a tight span of control and reflected in high net promoter scores and long average tenure.”
Speaking to that final point, First Watch’s one-shift model was always a labor draw in an industry known for its cyclical churn and volatile hours.
The average tenure of a First Watch GM is five years. It’s nine years for directors of operations, 12 for regional vice presidents, and 16 for VPs.
The average area of responsibility, or AOR, for GMs is one, directors of ops five, regional VPs 21, and VPs 100.
First Watch’s net promoter score is +28.
Tenure plus a straightforward philosophy, Tomasso said, enabled First Watch to scale without compromise. The idea of, if the brand can do something in one store, it can do it in 100, 1,000, or its long-term target of 2,200.
That means hospitality never leaving the core, he said. Things like opening the door and saying “good morning.” Greeting tables with a pot of coffee and a service philosophy that’s grounded in winning by doing right by the consumer. “And we do all of this at an everyday value,” he said.
Coming out of COVID, First Watch had an admittedly ambitious vision to create a $3 million prototype. It rethought aspects of stores, from site selection to host areas to back of house, patios, off-premises infrastructure (the only way to get a to-go order pre-pandemic was to call the restaurant and have a server take the order via phone. Carryout? That meant packaging up a dine-in meal and bringing it home).
In the end, First Watch got there, Tomasso said, “almost instantly.” And it hasn’t looked back.
By 2022, the brand had its first $4 million restaurant. In 2025, it cracked the $5 million threshold. That amounted to 61 percent growth.
Again, First Watch did so with one seven-and-a-half-hour shift per day and a per person average of about $18.
The brand’s three-year sales target of $2.8 million listed earlier? It was $1.8 million in 2019.
Highest net AUV restaurant
- 2025: $5 million
- 2024: $4.6 million
- 2023: $4.5 million
- 2022: $4.1 million
- 2021: $3.1 million
In 2025, First Watch had 58 stores over $3 million, up from 29, 23, 10, and one in the four years prior. The cost to build a First Watch is $1.8 million on average today, higher than $1 million in 2021. But stores are pushing $900,000 loftier annual volumes.
And another element to spotlight, Tomasso said, is portability, as First Watch spread to 33 states overall. Its top decile units today span 16 and 27 DMAs.
Florida, home to 148 First Watch stores, boasts an AUV of $2.4 million.
Down the line:
- Texas: 76 ($2.3 million)
- Ohio: 49 ($2.3 million)
- Arizona: 39 ($2.4 million)
- Virginia: 37 ($2.7 million)
- Georgia: 28 ($2.4 million)
- Missouri: 27 ($2.3 million)
“We’ve demonstrated that our concept travels and our economics work,” Tomasso said.
On that $1 billion cumulative net sales fact, phrased differently, First Watch created a sales machine that comes close to rivaling the annual size of its system. “And will operate for decades to come,” Tomasso added.
As shared in Q3, the brand plans to step down from 62 openings in 2026 to 55 next year. Doing so will aid with sales transfer that’s naturally occurred as the brand grew. Leveling a bit, CFO Ashlee Weisser said, empowers First Watch to refocus resources, like training and labor, to new openings, but also softens the traffic drag. Estimated sales transfer impacted comparable traffic 0.7 percent in 2022, 1.4 percent in 2023, 1.1 percent in 2024, 1.4 percent in 2025, and 1.5 percent in 2026. With fewer openings, it will lower to 1–1.5 percent in 2027 and keep improving, Weisser said. Traffic of 1.1 percent, to illustrate, would have been 2.3 percent if not for the impact.
CDO Eric Hartman explained sales transfer as an intentional approach for First Watch over the years as it built out markets and took the oxygen out of competitors. It’s earned that scale now to moderate and reap the benefits.
Priority No. 1 on this wider journey, though, was building a foundation to serve more guest demand and set the stage for First Watch’s next chapter. Tomasso referred to it as “coiling the spring” and making investments to open the valve, like kitchen display systems, pay at the table, waitlist management, and a relaunched app.
While less outward, First Watch focused on analog improvements, such as dining room optimization and back-of-house efficiencies, in order to drive greater throughput.
Ticket times improved nearly 20 percent. First Watch sees higher peak sales hours at its highest demand times, too. And learnings continue to be applied to new restaurants, which have shattered opening week records “multiple times” of late, Tomasso said.
With investments behind First Watch, and with a right-sized organization with optimized systems, there’s greater G&A leverage on deck.
First Watch, Tomasso said, will execute against an evolving playbook to create more interest and leverage unrivaled scale. The brand plans to invest more broadly in marketing, launch new products and platforms, create fresh sales channels, and keep leveraging its culinary innovation and health halo to appeal to “almost every diet trend,” not fleeting fads.
“The consumer landscape is constantly evolving, and so are we,” Tomasso said.
That “playbook” starts to turn
Matt Eisenacher, First Watch’s chief brand officer, began his presentation by showing a couple of the same slides Tomasso did: the chart on leading competitors and how the category of “daytime dining” is outpacing “breakfast.”
In plain terms, although there are brands with more stores serving more dayparts than First Watch, pound-for-pound, no brand in America, during daytime hours, delivers more breakfast and brunch than the chain does.
Like Tomasso noted, this owes partly to First Watch pioneering a space. Eisenacher explained it as, “better-for-you breakfast, but something that has brought relevance and a perspective on culinary to an established occasion.”
“And it’s those two things—relevance and a perspective on culinary,” he said, “that has attracted new customers. I think we can all agree that if we were in this room 10 years ago, we’d be talking about breakfast as an old person’s occasion. That’s not the case today.”
The innovation and “vibrancy” of daytime dining ushered in new generations.
Eisenacher said he could spotlight a lot of stats to support the notion, but the one he starts with is the percentage of customers who visited in the past year, or a look at recency. The number, according to a custom brand tracker, is 69 percent for First Watch. It’s 59 percent for remaining daytime dining brands. And 47 percent for family dining.
To the demographic topic, deploying the same tool, the percentage of diners by generation who dine out per month for breakfast:
- Gen Z: 76 percent
- Millennial: 73 percent
- Gen X: 53 percent
- Baby Boomer: 48 percent
According to Datassential, Gen Z sourced meals away from home 36 percent in the last month versus only 18 percent of Boomers.
Additionally, First Watch owns a bit of a unique niche within breakfast, Eisenacher said. Its customers skew higher income, which insulates the chain from macro ups-and-downs.
Roughly 56 percent of First Watch’s guest base resides in the $100,000-plus income bracket. Another 30 percent make between $50,000–$100,000 (14 percent less than $50,000).
It splits as 38 percent millennial, 30 percent Gen X, 23 percent Boomer, and 7 percent Gen Z.
First Watch attracts a discerning diner aware of their lifestyle choices who happens to also appreciate convenience.
Prior to 2020, delivery did not really exist within breakfast. It was thrust on the category while being ubiquitous elsewhere. The prevailing thought those days was it was two different profiles. You had a dine-in guest and a delivery one.
That’s hardly proven out, Eisenacher said. Brand agnostic, what First Watch’s data showed was heavy users of delivery for breakfast and brunch overall were also heavy users of First Watch—to the tune of 56 percent (22 percent for moderate users and 15 percent for light)
This dispelled the idea it’s two separate diners and instead uncovered the reality eating occasions became more dynamic.
“It’s one person with varying needs at different times,” Eisenacher said.
Meaning, it became, and will remain on this road forward, imperative for First Watch to show up for all relevant daytime occasions. The people who appreciate great mornings, he said, are the same who are more international about their day, what they eat, and how they move.
The plan for First Watch to answer the call begins with how it expects to reach people.
The strategy pillars around awareness, accessibility, and traffic through demand generation (paid media, creators, collaborations), growing occasions (group ordering, Sun on the Run [more on this in a moment] and catering), and innovation (First Watch’s seasonal menu).
Here’s what the brand’s percent of investments looks like:
- Streaming: 17 percent
- Paid search: 17 percent
- Meta: 14 percent
- Programmatic: 13 percent
- YouTube: 11 percent
- OOH: 10 percent
- Influencers: 8 percent
- TikTok: 7 percent
- Linear TV: 2 percent
- Team Snap: 1 percent
This translated to growing awareness. From 2024–2026 to date, awareness climbed from 37 to 48 percent. “Ever dined” rose from 25 to 32 percent. “Dined in the past year,” from 18 to 23 percent.
Paid search today runs $3 cost per visit and 10.1X ROAS. When Eisenacher joined First Watch in 2019 as SVP of brand strategy and innovation, it was $8.
TV and video focuses on top of funnel, with linear CPM as low as $4–$5.
The goal for First Watch presently is lower mix fully moved to the top of the funnel. It uses its app and insiders program to talk to existing customers. Paid dollars go almost exclusively upward to attract new ones.
Eisenacher shared an example in Dallas Fort-Worth, which posted outsized performance versus other control markets.
- OOH: 21 percent
- Linear TV: 20 percent
- Streaming: 16 percent
- YouTube: 15 percent
- Meta: 11
- Paid search: 10 percent
- TikTok: 7 percent
Basically, in addition to its typical media mix, First Watch added local linear TV.
Eisenacher also spoke about the “dizzying” evolution of influencers from brand ambassadors to media units to content creators. Year-to-date, First Watch saw 62 million views and reach of 41 million.
But the strategy has evolved and led, in a sense, to what First Watch unveiled during its Q3 earnings—a partnership with TikTok GO as one of the early batch of pilot restaurant brands. The platform came to First Watch and Eisenacher said the chain is one of an “extremely small” initial group.
This will connect videos, search, and restaurant pages to location-specific offers and in-app transactions. So, First Watch could, in theory, move diners from inspiration to action on a platform with some 200 million active monthly users.
“Their focus is really getting more local with more local creators, and I can tell you, while there is an opportunity to drive sales, which is great, what we are more excited about is the sheer magnitude of the brand exposure that’s estimated for us once we scale this up after pilot,” Eisenacher said.
First Watch began testing this week. Learnings will inform a more formal launch closer to, or into, 2027.
It’s also going to merge into a “Morning Makers” platform where First Watch partners with creators Jenna Palek, Mallory Ervin, Isaac Rochell, and Gabby Golf Girl to showcase some of what Eisenacher explained before—how First Watch caters to an intentional morning crowd. Collectively, the group has 7 million-plus followers across sites.
First Watch last year relaunched its app experience, waitlist, and ordering. That opened the window to group ordering, which gives, say, an office, the chance to order lunch by allowing users to grab a link and customize options into one bag, as you often see on third-party sites.
While not exactly novel, it was new for First Watch. Previously, the brand wasn’t built to accommodate such designs. But investments around tech to serve more demand opened potential.
That should help First Watch drive incremental weekday sales and get onto some third-party corporate ordering marketplaces like ezCater. In time, it’s going to be an on-ramp into catering.
Yet this larger conversation around daytime capacity brought First Watch to the introduction of another buzz-worthy launch: “Sun on the Run.” It’s a Monday through Friday menu that prices at $9.99 and is app exclusive.
Sun on the Run builds on First Watch’s first party and app experience and opens the brand to a customer on-the-go who can now access a better option than what they might grab at their closest drive-thru.
First Watch is testing with DoorDash and thus far, Eisenacher said, witnessed trial every week and month and progression into increased repeat. There are three sandwiches and three burritos on the lineup: The Banger, OG, Pesto Sunrise, The Early Bird, The Main Character, and The Spicy Cowboy.
First Watch has a dedicated section in its app and still shows it during weekends. Even if customers can’t order, they see Sun on the Run and can return during the week to trial.
There’s an option to bundle and trade up to a drink or juice as well. And First Watch built tech to allow for curbside pickup. The items don’t come with sides to protect margins. First Watch is tinkering with prices on DoorDash and remaining agile, Eisenacher said.
He added Sun on the Run is not disrupting operations given it’s taking place during softer hours (weekday) and attracting a good number of guests who hadn’t been to the brand before, or in the last 18-plus months. It’s reaching lapsed or new diners without sacrificing First Watch’s core experience. The brand added two new ingredients and employees prepare orders like they would third-party ones.
“To us, this is another gear for growth as we find restaurants that are able to accommodate that increased convenience,” Eisenacher said.
