When the private equity firm Mercato Partners’ $200 million Savory Restaurant Fund obtained a majority interest in Hash Kitchen, it had one clear goal in mind: transform the brand into the breakfast/brunch category’s dominant player west of the Mississippi.
The potential is clear as soon as one enters the restaurant, says Andrew Smith, managing partner of Savory. There’s a DJ stand, and the walls are covered with clever artwork and phrases, like “brunch goals,” “the brunch life,” and “bloodies are for breakfast, breakfast is for bloodies.”
Hash Kitchen’s most eye-catching feature is what Smith calls “one of the largest Bloody Mary bars known to man.” The build-your-own setup includes 50-plus toppings like pickled okra and wings.
The Arizona-based concept describes its food menu as a chef-driven reimagining of breakfast classics. For instance, there’s the $12 Protein Packed Buttermilk pancakes (old-fashioned rolled oats, bananas, fresh berries, chia seeds, and sweet mascarpone) and the $13 Captain Crunch Peanut Butter and Jelly French Toast (Captain Crunch–encrusted Texas toast, creamy peanut butter, strawberry jelly filling, and powdered sugar).
“The sights, the sounds, the smells, the experience overall, how you felt, the food quality, all of those items when you walk out—it was memorable. It just didn’t feel like a breakfast diner,” Smith says. “It’s experiential, extremely Instagrammable, extremely cult-following oriented, where people just love it down there. And then when we look at the store-level economics, they’re well above anything we’ve seen in the industry.”
