Teriyaki Madness : Teriyaki Madness Owners on Creating Opportunity for Employees

This video, recorded at the 2023 TMAD Conference, features Teriyaki Madness franchise owners explaining the human reason they keep building. The featured operators have signed for eight stores total — three initially, plus another five this year — and plan to develop them across Connecticut and likely Western Massachusetts. What drives the expansion, in the owners' framing, is not store count itself. It is the ability to create opportunities for the people who work for them — building leadership skills, personal integrity, an understanding of the value of hard work, and ways to operate more efficiently in young and older employees alike. They describe that work as an essential part of what Teriyaki Madness gives them as a platform. The owners walk through a specific example to illustrate the philosophy. One employee joined two months after they opened, spoke no English, and had recently come from Mexico. Six and a half years later he is their main manager — they paid for his English classes, trust him to run the operation when they're traveling, and rely on his judgment without anxiety. The closing thread is about giving forward. The owners describe a giving-to-give philosophy that extends past community work to the people who work for them — giving a better chance in life because someone gave them a shot. What they're proudest of, more than the financial outcome, is the chain of opportunity they've created: they support their employees, the employees support them, and that mutual support is what they believe in every day.