Does This Deal Taste Good?

There are a lot of franchise restaurants. So how do you know which ones are worth buying? This restaurant veteran says it’s all about average unit volume—and here's why.

- by KIM KAVIN

Chandi (center) at the groundbreaking for Chicken Guy! in American Canyon, California, with then-mayor Leon Garcia (left) and his wife Eva Garcia.

If you want to work in restaurants, look at the business through Sonu Chandi’s eyes. His life has been shaped by this business, but he also knows it’s a game of numbers.

In 2000, at the age of 16, he moved to America from his small Indian village-then learned English while working at a restaurant his dad managed. In 2003, his dad and two partners opened a restaurant, and Chandi got involved with the front-of-house. “That’s how I learned how the restaurant world works,” he says. Then he got into the business himself. He bought an existing Mountain Mike’s Pizza franchise in 2007. And now Chandi Hospitality Group, a company he founded with his brothers, runs 17 Mountain Mike's, is opening 10 units of Guy Fieri’s Chicken Guy! and owns a few independent restaurants too.