Meet Nate Hybl | Founder of gusto!

We had the good fortune of connecting with Nate Hybl and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Nate, is your business focused on helping the community? If so, how?

At gusto!, we give generously to a lot of causes in different ways – youth education, teachers, cops, fire fighters. We do a promotion called “Medical Mondays” where we offer free meals to medical professionals at our shops near medical campuses. Our team has built houses for Habitat for Humanity and pulled together groceries for families in need.

On a different scale, we try to help our communities (and the world) by trying to disrupt fast food and get people to try things that are better for them. We strive to be the pinnacle of company culture in the restaurant industry – offering better food and better jobs where people actually want to go to work and look forward to growing within the company. We always look forward to seeing the excitement of our customers when they see one of our shops is coming to their neighborhood.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.

I was going through a big life change when I started gusto! – personally and professionally. I felt like I was toward the bottom of the barrel, so I didn’t have a whole lot to lose. I truly went out on a limb and set out to create a product that I wanted and craved as a consumer: healthier food that was reasonably priced, diverse and full of flavor. I had the audacity to say, you know what? No one is doing this in Atlanta – why not me? There’s a lot of reasons why it maybe shouldn’t have been me, but hey, I got through it!

It wasn’t easy, but I never gave up. Our purpose statement is “to intentionally foster growth”, so we’re either fertilizing the existing plant, or sometimes it needs to prune to grow. That’s not giving up – pruning is healthy for the rest of the plant. You never give up, sometimes you just have to pivot or change directions. The answer can always be found.

Something I learned is that balance is kind of an illusion. You just have to counterbalance the craziness of being an entrepreneur with things like going on a walk, exercising, praying, breathing and laughing (at yourself and with your teammates). I think balance is unachievable, but you have to fight against the craziness and make it work.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
That’s tough because a lot of people helped me get to this point, but I think one that stands out is one of my first hires: Chef Shawn Grodensky. He’s now a business partner of mine and has been around since our very first location. I had the idea and knew how I wanted the menu to work, but I needed a legitimate chef to help me solidify the kitchen part of the brand. I’m not sure that we’d be where we are without that hire and without our relationship. I think he always had visions of being a full service, fine-dining type of chef, but one day I asked him to go walk nine holes with me and while we were walking, I said “Do you want to go change the world?” I explained the story a better-for-you, healthy fast food, and that really resonated with him. Seven years later, we’re still business partners.

Website: https://www.whatsyourgusto.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whatsyourgusto/