Rajiv Dinakaran grew a family Bojangles business from 6 restaurants to 46 with five moves: start at the bottom, turn problems into systems, hire people who will outgrow the job, hand out ownership, and give AI the boring work.
Rajiv Dinakaran is President and Chief Operating Officer of Georgia Foods, a family owned Bojangles franchisee. Workstream's On the Clock 2026 billed him as President & COO, Georgia Foods / Bojangles. His father started with six restaurants in North Carolina. The group now runs 46 across Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia, and Rajiv runs the Georgia side with his sister.
I built 720 Sweets from one shop to seven locations, then sold it. At Workstream's On the Clock 2026 in Atlanta, I sat down with Rajiv for half an hour. He is the only speaker I met who still works the drive through in a suit. Here are the five moves that took the group from 6 to 46, with the version that fits a two location operator.
Rajiv joined the family business at 16. He could have walked in as the owner's son and started at the top. He did not, and the reason came from his father.
"If you want respect, you have to earn it." That was his father's lesson, and he still repeats it as a rule he works by.
"I don't want to come in as the stereotypical boss's son."
Rajiv Dinakaran
His worry was specific. He did not want to arrive on day one and start telling people what to do in a business he had never worked in. So he started at the bottom instead, and he says both he and his father wanted it that way.
There was a second reason, and it matters at any size. He wanted to know what the jobs take, and what the people doing them go through, so he could make their lives better. It is hard to improve a job you have never done yourself.
He did not stop once he had the title. He is still in the restaurants, "making chicken, making biscuits", working the drive through and the front register. Asked how long it took to earn his rank, he says he is still earning it.
His point is that a crew watches what the owner does, not what the owner says. "This is a people business and I'm one of these people." Regardless of title or stature, in his phrase, "we're all in this together".
What you can copy: work one full shift a week in the job you understand least, and let people see you do it badly at first. Two locations makes this easier than 46, not harder.
The hard part of going from six restaurants to 46 was not buying the restaurants. It was building the head office behind them.
Every question was about timing. When do we need HR services. When do we need more office staff. When do we need marketing people. Too early and you are paying for a head office you cannot fill. Too late and managers spend the day on the phone doing the office's work.
His answer was a habit he calls chasing the problem.
Because he was in the restaurants all the time, problems arrived in front of him rather than in a report. And every time he saw one, he asked whether it was really this store's problem. Usually it was not. It was a problem the whole group had, and that store was where he happened to see it.
That changed what he did next. Instead of fixing the one store, he asked what he could build to fix it everywhere, and whether it would make the job easier for everyone.
"Make sure you're creating a system that works multiple times."
Rajiv Dinakaran
He does not do this to be tidy. More business means he can pay more, add benefits, and put more labour hours back into the restaurants. The system is how a fix at one store reaches the other 45.
What you can copy: next time you fix something at one location, spend the extra twenty minutes writing down how you fixed it. At two locations that note is your whole operations manual, and it is what makes store three possible.
Rajiv has a clear view of who does well in this industry. Looking around a room of successful operators, he says the difference is not that they have more money. It is that they have more good people around them, and that they built real relationships on the way up.
He has proof on his own payroll. The group's director of IT and analytics started in high school as a shift manager, "making maybe $10 an hour". He has now worked for Rajiv's father for over 25 years, and he runs their IT services and database management.
"We were able to develop people into who they wanted to become."
Rajiv Dinakaran
That is the part he treats as the real result. The restaurants gave that person somewhere to grow into a much bigger job.
So he changed how he hired. As the group grew, Rajiv told candidates where it was going. They were not trying to stay a single unit franchisee, they wanted to keep growing, and they needed people to make it happen.
"I was hiring people with the intention of, I want you to grow with me." He says it out loud in the interview. You are a single store manager today, and the plan is for both of us to see you running several. How do we get there together? It starts with getting this one right.
Most of his area managers today came in through exactly that conversation. Workstream's guide to hiring and training a good manager is a reasonable place to start if you have never written that pitch down.
What you can copy: at your next manager interview, describe the job two levels above the one you are filling, and ask if they want it. The answer tells you whether you are filling a shift or hiring someone who will grow with you.
I asked what the next five years look like. He did not talk about how many restaurants he wants. He talked about wanting the company and the culture to be somewhere people retire from.
He wants people in every restaurant who think like owners. Not shareholders with a piece of the company. People who feel the store is theirs.
He has a phrase for it. "This is my Bojangles." He wants every general manager saying that about the store they run.
He wants people to know "they're the true owners of the business", and to ask on their own what they can do to make this store better. When that happens, he says, they care how the store performs, because they see the store's results as their own.
"They don't want to feel like I'm an employee number."
Rajiv Dinakaran
The opposite of ownership, in his description, is a paycheck, a clock in, a clock out. That is what most hourly jobs offer, and it is why people leave them so fast.
He puts real weight on this. That mentality, he says, "really separates the businesses that will be around for the next five, ten, 15 years and the ones that won't".
It also changes what happens when somebody makes a mistake. People who feel like owners admit the mistake and learn from it. They work somewhere that respects them, so they are not afraid to get things wrong.
What you can copy: stop naming a store after its street and start naming it after the person who runs it, out loud and in front of others. It costs nothing, and it is the smallest version of what he means.
Ownership starts with how the company holds someone's record. Chasing a document or correcting the same details twice is time that could have gone into making that person feel this is their restaurant. Workstream's HR platform gives each person one record they can open themselves, with their documents, details and history in it. Explore Workstream →
Bojangles rolled out an AI drive through order taker called Bo-Linda, and his group runs it.
In his description, "AI takes the order, it puts it into the computer, the whole kitchen can hear it."
The point is not that it is new technology. It is that the work moves. Nobody is tied up taking orders, so the crew spends more of the shift with guests. They use AI the same way for schedule management, cash management and labour management, and he is proud of the technology the brand runs on.
Then I showed him a compliance product video, and his reaction is the best short answer I have heard on where to start with AI. Time, inventory and compliance, he says, "they're important things, but they're not the fun part of the business".
"AI loves boring jobs."
Rajiv Dinakaran
Today his group handles compliance with people, not software. A team covers insurance and HR compliance weekly. New hires finish their paperwork before they start, and work authorisation gets verified. When something goes wrong there are forms, videos and phone calls so nothing slips through.
What a system would add, he says, is speed, and catching the things nobody has time to notice in a busy week. Somebody on site two days but paid for four. Somebody scheduled for one day and clocked in for five. The information already exists. It just comes from too many people for one person to read.
Asked who benefits, he said everyone, which is the answer every operator at this event gave me. Managers answer for labour cost and compliance, so it is "one less audit for them to have to worry about". His head of HR taught him the rest of it: take stress off the restaurants and it comes off her desk too.
He is careful about where AI stops. "AI isn't going to be a silver bullet." Some parts of a restaurant never go away, and the human touch is the first one. "They don't want to be served by robots."
On Workstream itself he was straightforward. "It's been able to grow with us." When his team raises a problem they get a solution back rather than a new product pitch. That is the difference he cares about: "the goal is to be a partnership, a true partnership". If compliance across a growing group is the part that worries you, Workstream's overview of compliance software for franchise restaurants covers the same ground.
What you can copy: list every task in your week that nobody enjoys and nobody sees. That list, not the customer facing stuff, is your first automation project.
The last thing he said about size stayed with me. He thought he had won Wimbledon when he got his first location, and he says the group is careful not to take any of it for granted now. "Bigger doesn't necessarily mean we're better." They grow where it makes sense, and the number of restaurants is not the only way they measure themselves. As he puts it, "We can be successful at 46."
That is a useful sentence at any number. You can be successful at two.
Starting at the bottom is how you earn the respect of the people you will later lead. Rajiv Dinakaran joined his family's Bojangles business at 16 and worked up rather than arriving as the boss's son. He wanted the crew to see him as one of them. He also learned what each job takes, which let him improve them later.
Build the back office in step with the restaurants, and turn every repeat problem into a system. Rajiv Dinakaran's group grew from his father's six locations to 46 by working out when to add HR services, office staff and marketing people. His rule is to ask whether a problem is one store's or the group's, then build a fix that works more than once.
Tell candidates where the business is going and hire for the job two levels up. Rajiv Dinakaran hired single store managers with the stated plan that they would run several locations, and most of his area managers today came in that way. His director of IT and analytics started as a high school shift manager on about $10 an hour.
Give people the store by name and let them make decisions about it. Rajiv Dinakaran wants each manager to say "this is my Bojangles" and to know they are the true owners of the business. Nobody wants to feel like an employee number, he says, and that mindset decides which businesses are still around in five, ten or 15 years.
Start with the jobs nobody enjoys and no customer sees. Rajiv Dinakaran puts time tracking, inventory and compliance in that group, and says AI loves boring jobs. His restaurants run an AI drive through order taker, so the crew spends less time taking orders and more time with guests. The human side of service, he says, should stay human.
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About the author. Wilson K Lee built 720 Sweets from one shop to seven locations and sold it. He now runs wilsonklee.com, where he publishes real numbers and playbooks for food and beverage owners, and he hosted the speaker interviews at Workstream's On the Clock 2026.