Healthy fast food could lead to quick growth for North Idaho restaurateur
At 31, the sum of his experiences led him to develop a restaurant concept with his wife, Jammie, that just might disrupt the fast-food industry.
Sixteen months ago, the couple founded Konala LLC and opened its first restaurant in Post Falls. The concept is centered on convenient, healthy, high-protein alternatives to conventional fast food.
Last month, Konala opened its second restaurant in an old Carl’s Jr. along Appleway Avenue in Coeur d’Alene, and it has plans in the works for four more in the Spokane area. Meantime, Miller says the company has established franchising opportunities for the concept, with the ability to offer franchise opportunities in 39 states so far. It’s working on the 40th, Washington state, now.
To help it grow, Konala has signed on with Fransmart Franchising, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based franchise development company that worked with 10 franchises to grow to more than 100 locations, including Qdoba and Five Guys Burgers.
Dan Rowe, president and CEO of Fransmart, contends Miller has tapped into a burgeoning market for healthy fast food. Equally as important, he says, Miller has developed a system in which a restaurant requires half the labor a typical fast-food eatery would need, making it more profitable than others.
“I’ve been in this business for 30 years, and every time I talk to (Miller), I feel like I’m talking to a peer,” Rowe says. “I think Konala will be bigger than any other brand I’ve ever grown.”
He adds, “Plus, I like the guy. I don’t like everyone I meet, but I like him.”
Miller was born in the Bay Area and has lived in 10 states. His dad worked for car dealerships as a fixer of sorts. In that profession, he’d go to a dealership that was underperforming, turn it around, and move on to the next one after a few years.
Consequently, Miller moved around a lot as a kid. A month before he graduated from high school in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, his parents moved to the Coeur d’Alene area to work with some Inland Northwest dealerships.
He followed them but didn’t stay long. In the years that followed high school, he tried college three times, enlisted in the U.S. Army, trained to become a firefighter, worked to become a welder, and taught scuba diving.
“My staff likes to joke that you win an award if you get the timeline of my life correct.” he says. “It’s ridiculous. My wife doesn’t even know how to tell it all.”
But it was during his time in the Army that a couple of things happened that proved to be transformational. One, his grandfather, who had been a successful architect and developer in San Francisco, got him interested in investing in stocks. He began researching and hit on investing in companies like Tesla and Amazon at the right time.
Around the same time, he rediscovered a love of reading and became more interested in books about business and personal development.
“I realized that I never actually hated school,” Miller says. “I just didn’t like being told what to learn.”
It was while scuba instructing in Hawaii that he met Jammie, who also was from California and was attending the University of Hawaii. While they were dating, they watched Chef, a 2014 movie about a chef who falls from grace and opens a food truck. Inspired by the movie, the couple moved to Coeur d’Alene, took a loan from Miller’s parents, and started the Burger Bunker food truck.
About a half-year later, the Millers had an opportunity to buy the Enoteca Fine Wine & Beer bar in Post Falls. Miller sold the stocks he had invested in and bought the business, as well as the building in which it was located and some surrounding properties. After remodeling the property and parking the food truck out front, they opened the Bunker Bar.
Miller says he enjoyed opening and expanding the bar, but he wanted to start a business that aligned more closely with his healthy lifestyle and began imagining a new restaurant concept.
Describing himself as an equipment and operations nerd, Miller says, “There’s a huge problem out there with accessibility to healthy food. I started out thinking, with our food knowledge and our equipment knowledge, we can make a concept where we make healthy eating as delicious and convenient as possible.”
After experimenting with 300-plus meal iterations, the concept came into focus, and Konala—a combination of the names of the Millers’ dogs, Kona and Nala—was born.
Miller says the long-term goal is to grow to 1,000 Konala locations in 10 years. More than specific numbers, though, he says he wants the company to grow with the right mindset.
“We just want to continue to grow and keep our culture and mission in mind while we do so,” he says. “That’s the passion.”
Interested in franchising? Apply to own a Konala Franchise HERE