Today we’d like to introduce you to Khallil Daher.
Hi Khallil, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
For more than 15 years, I worked as an automotive engineer in Michigan. Engineering was my career, but food was always my passion. I grew up loving food, spent time working in restaurants, and from a very young age knew there was something about bringing people together through food that I loved.
Eventually, I reached a point where I wanted to turn that passion into something bigger.
That’s when I partnered with my co-founder, Subhan Jahromi, a successful technology entrepreneur who has spent his career building and scaling companies. From our earliest conversations, we agreed on one thing: if we were going to build a restaurant, we weren’t going to think small.
The vision was to build Char’d into a brand that could eventually reach hundreds of locations.
So I took the leap. I left a 15-plus-year career in automotive engineering, moved my family from Michigan to Virginia, and we started the Char’d journey.
But we didn’t begin by spending millions of dollars opening restaurants. We wanted to prove that people actually loved the food and the concept first. So we started with a food truck.
The response exceeded our expectations. The traffic kept coming, our customer base kept growing, and it became clear that Char’d could be much bigger than a food truck.
That gave us the confidence to open our first brick-and-mortar location at Tysons Galleria.
From there, things began moving quickly. We started receiving interest from investors, venture firms, potential franchisees, customers, and others who wanted to participate in growing the Char’d brand.
But we made a deliberate decision not to take outside capital.
Char’d has been completely self-funded and bootstrapped. We’re fortunate to be in a position where we can grow the company ourselves, which allows us to stay focused on the food, the customer experience, and building the brand the way we believe it should be built.
Today, Char’d has grown from one food truck into three locations across Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., and we’re actively looking for the next locations and markets to enter.
But three locations were never the destination.
From the beginning, we built Char’d with the ambition of becoming a brand with hundreds of locations. We’re still early in that journey, and in many ways, we’re just getting started.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road, but I also don’t think building something great is supposed to be.
My background is in engineering, so I tend to look at Char’d almost like a product. What the customer sees is a great burger and a great experience, but there is an incredible amount of engineering, obsession, and attention to detail happening behind the scenes to consistently deliver that.
Everything matters. The supply chain, the quality and consistency of the ingredients, choosing the right vendors and partners, designing the kitchen, hiring and training the right people, how quickly an order moves through the line, and even how the food is packaged and handed to the customer. When you’re trying to maintain a high standard while also building something that can eventually scale to hundreds of locations, every one of those details has to be repeatable.
A lot of that comes through trial and error. We’ve made mistakes, changed processes, switched partners, adjusted recipes, and learned what works and what doesn’t. Even today, we’re constantly tweaking things. We might change a small part of the kitchen workflow or how we prepare an ingredient because we realize it can save time without sacrificing quality.
One of the biggest lessons has been that growth itself creates new challenges. What works perfectly at one location doesn’t necessarily work when you have three, and what works at three locations won’t necessarily work at 50 or 100. So we’re constantly asking ourselves: how do we make this simpler, faster, more consistent, and ultimately better for the customer?
That’s really been the journey. We’re obsessive about the product, but we’re equally obsessive about the systems behind the product. The customer shouldn’t have to see any of that complexity. They should just walk in, get an amazing meal, have a great experience, and want to come back. Our job is to engineer everything behind the scenes to make that happen consistently.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m a builder at heart. I enjoy taking an idea, figuring out what makes it work, and creating the systems and foundation that allow it to grow. Today, my focus is on building Char’d into a meaningful, scalable restaurant brand while making sure growth never comes at the expense of quality or the customer experience.
I’d say my specialty is bringing an engineering mindset to hospitality. I tend to look at every part of the business with the same questions: How can we make this better? How can we make it more consistent? How can we make it repeatable? And most importantly, will it still work when we are operating at a much larger scale?
What I’m most proud of is that we’ve been able to create something people genuinely connect with while maintaining control over how we grow. There are always opportunities to move faster, but I believe building something enduring is more important than simply building something quickly.
What sets me apart is probably the combination of being analytical and deeply passionate about the product. I care about the details from the food and hospitality to operations and scalability but I’m equally focused on the bigger picture. I’m not interested in building a few successful restaurants. I’m interested in creating a brand and an organization that can last, grow, and become much bigger than any one location.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
There are a lot of people who deserve credit for where I am today. Building a business is never something you do entirely on your own, and I’ve been fortunate to have people around me who believed in what I was trying to build, sometimes before there was much to show for it.
My wife has been one of my biggest supporters throughout this journey. Making a major career change and building a company requires sacrifices that extend far beyond the person starting the business. Having her support, patience, and belief in me gave me the confidence to take risks that I probably wouldn’t have taken otherwise.
My business partner, Subhan, also deserves a tremendous amount of credit. We bring different experiences and perspectives to the table, and that has been one of our greatest strengths. Having a partner who shares the same ambition for the company, but can also challenge my thinking and approach problems differently, has made both the business and me better.
I’ve also had many friends throughout the years who have supported me in different ways. Some offered advice, some made introductions, some showed up as customers, and others simply encouraged me during the difficult moments. Those things may seem small individually, but when you’re building something from the ground up, having people genuinely rooting for you makes a real difference.
Ultimately, I’ve learned that success is rarely an individual accomplishment. I’m proud of what we’re building, but I’m equally grateful for the people who have supported, challenged, and believed in me along the way.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://chardeats.com
- Instagram: @chardeats
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/Chardeats-100091890610996/
