Exploring Life & Business with Albert Shim of EggBred International

Today we’d like to introduce you to Albert Shim.

Hi Albert, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I’m a chef by trade. After graduating from culinary school back in 2005, I’ve worked in many different sectors of the restaurant industry. In 2013, I broke off to do my own thing and started a small farmer’s market food stand out in Long Beach, CA that eventually turned into a food truck concept. Over the next 7 years, I worked with a partner to scale that concept to 3 trucks and 4 brick and mortar locations.

However partnerships are very tough to maintain, and things eventually come to an end. So in 2020, I sold my interests off to him and started the EggBred concept. Little did I know, that while we were building the first store out, COVID hit, and I had to open the restaurant mid-pandemic.

Although we had concerns going into the future, having a take-out-friendly breakfast brand open up before one of the last lockdowns worked to our advantage. With folks feeling cooped up and isolated, I think finding a new restaurant to try was something people looked forward to.

Since then, we’ve been very grateful to have franchised the brand and formalized partnerships in Long Beach, Huntington Beach, Brea, Whittier, and Eastvale, California as well as Tampa, Florida. We also currently have an additional 15 candidates in various stages of our discovery process as well. We’re very excited for the first few of these stores to launch toward the end of this year and our team is very excited for the next years to come!

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has not been a smooth road.

From concerns about opening our doors during a global pandemic to dealing with inflation over this past year, it’s been a bit of a painful journey so far. I’m just grateful to have faith in the process and the lessons learned along the way.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
EggBred, at its core, is an egg-themed breakfast & brunch fast casual restaurant concept that specializes in craft breakfast sandwiches with an emphasis on local bakery milk buns, English muffins, avocado toast, shareables, and chef-driven sides.

We launched the first restaurant in October 2020 – right in the middle of the pandemic, and although we had concerns going into the future, we’ve blown past our expectations on store revenue, and we’re doing all of this out of a small 1350 sq ft unit between the hours of 7 am-3 pm.

Up to this point, the brand has been featured in various publications, such as the Orange County Register, Orange Coast Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Times OC, while the local response on Yelp has been amazing as well.

I wanted to create a restaurant concept that has all the amazing experiences of owning and operating a restaurant, but during hours that allow each franchisee (and himself) to still be able to “pick the kids up from school and be home for dinner”.

We have a very unique breakfast concept with a menu that’s interesting, yet very comforting, familiar, and approachable. And due to this, we cater to a very broad demographic.

We’re strong believers in cooking quality food with quality customer service, fresh to order, consistent, and served with a smile. Aside from all of this, I honestly feel that we’ve seen this type of success because the concept was founded on the intention to serve a positive purpose within the community and it’s because we choose to treat our employees with dignity, respect, and we let them feel like we have their backs.

We’ve been working closely with multiple vendors, manufacturers, and distributors to help keep our product consistent And have also been working on our back-end systems and support to give our franchisees the best chance for success, and we’re ready to take this concept nationwide.

We also have 3 different management approaches (“manage the manager”, owner-operator, or husband and wife team) to help supplement, transition, replace, or break away from their current occupation. And, we’re looking for compatible like-minded franchisees to share in our success.

Please feel free to visit www.eggbred.com/franchise for more information.

Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
I guess you can say I’ve been pretty lucky, but I honestly don’t think that luck has much to do with anything at all and it’s rather about timing, commitment, work ethic, maintaining consistency, and having the right soft skills.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.eggbred.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/eggbredoc
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/eggbredoc
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/albert-shim-46449a97
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/eggbred-la-habra-3