Scott Svenson
Managing Partner, The Sienna Group. On 1 show, 3 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveinvestormodpizza.com ↗
Alongside his wife Ally Svenson, he co-founded the UK-based Seattle Coffee Company, which was acquired by Starbucks in 1998, and later served as President of Starbucks UK and Europe. In 2008, the couple founded MOD Pizza, scaling the fast-casual chain to over 500 locations before its 2024 acquisition.
1shows
3appearances
28statements
12resolved
10supported
0contradicted
83%fully supported
2said about them ↓ Everything Scott Svenson said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Svenson: Post-pandemic capital needs forced MOD Pizza to sell the company
“And then we got into a dynamic where we needed to raise capital, which we knew we were going to. It just accelerated it and put us into a position of either needing to raise capital or sell the company. And we ended up selling.”
Scott Svenson: Board disclosures led to a front-page FT story ousting CEO
“I walked back in the boardroom and shared what I had seen, and that led to a front page article in the Financial Times the next day that this CEO had been removed.”
Svenson: Restaurant chains must maximize home market density before geographic expansion
“In our industry, there's a formula that is the more penetrated you are in a market, the more well-known your brand, and generally the brands that are more well-known perform better. So making sure that you really feel like you've, before you move into a new ma…”
Svenson: Healthy restaurants need 2-3x revenue-to-buildout ratio and 20% EBITDA
“People want to see that a couple of things that your revenue is at least two times your cost. Cost to build and open a store, your capital cost, and ideally closer to three, but at least two times. So if it costs you half a million dollars to open a store, the…”
Scott Svenson: Consumers don't yet vote with pocketbooks for mission-driven brands
“I don't think consumers yet are necessarily voting with their pocketbooks the way they do with their conscience, the way that they might talk about it.”
Scott Svenson: Starbucks amplified the operational dysfunctions of small startups at scale
“What we found was all of the challenges and the imperfections and the dysfunction that we had in our small little company were just amplified on a bigger scale at Starbucks”
Scott Svenson: Starbucks pushed to replicate US playbooks abroad without adapting
“There was a lot of momentum organizationally to simply replicate in a new market what they had success doing elsewhere”
Scott Svenson: Fast-casual pizza concept required cracking lunch economics to survive
“This concept wouldn't work if we couldn't crack the lunch occasion, just given the economics of paying for a piece of real estate and the people and so forth.”
Scott Svenson: First-mover market leads in retail dining are hard to supplant
“If you allow a brand in a category to get too far ahead in a particular market, it's hard to supplant them.”
Scott Svenson: Category leadership outweighs the collateral damage of hyper-growth
“Whatever mistakes we made, whatever collateral damage, if you will, there comes from going too fast would be more than made up for by winning in this category and having All the advantages that come from being that market share leader over time, being the Star…”
Svenson: Restaurant price inflation caused consumers to reduce dining visits
“And then ultimately the inflationary spike that led to a lot of Price change in the industry last over the last few years started to manifest in terms of consumers eating out less or having less occasions, less restaurant visits.”
Svenson: Best-in-class restaurant brands like Chipotle and CAVA achieve mid-20s margins
“Best in class brands, Chipotle and Cava and others are in the mid twenties.”
Scott Svenson: Ousted CrestaCare CEO backed Seattle Coffee Company's launch
“Allie and I built it, and they were our backers.”
Scott Svenson: Over 90% of UK coffee was instant in the mid-1990s
“Around the world at that time, About 92% of all coffee consumed was real coffee, and eight percent was instant. In the UK, it was the inverse of that. It was over 90% instant, and the balance was real.”
Scott Svenson: Seattle Coffee Company's early food sales tripled Starbucks' share
“Starbucks food sales at the time were eight to 10% of sales, and ours were 25%.”
Scott Svenson: Seattle Coffee Company raced for real estate to defend against Starbucks
“We knew that it was a market share game. We knew that we had to get out and secure the right real estate and build the brand, and in our real, in our market, they talk about the first mover advantage, and we had to secure that first mover advantage so that if …”
Scott Svenson: Seattle Coffee Company explored US acquisitions to rival Starbucks
“We had signed up with partners in the Middle East, and South Africa, and Southeast Asia, and had plans to go to Northern Europe, and actually had had conversations with several brands in the U.S., Well-known brands about us acquiring them to create a, an entre…”
Svenson: Seattle Coffee Company had 68 stores and 50 in UK pipeline when acquired
“At the time we sold to Starbucks, we had 68 locations, but we had 50 locations in our UK pipeline for the next year, and we had a whole bunch of stores we were going to be opening internationally.”
Scott Svenson: MOD Pizza ovens hold 15-20 pizzas baking in 3-4 minutes
“In our ovens, we can at peak have 15 to 20 pizzas in the oven at one time, But it's still gonna take, you know, three to four minutes for that product to cook”
Svenson: 85% of MOD Pizza locations are company-owned and 15% franchised
“So today, 85% of our stores are company-owned, 15% are franchised with nine partners who were fabulous, incredibly valuable, and experienced operators”
Scott Svenson: MOD Pizza scaled from 12 to over 400 stores within 5 years
“On our fifth birthday, 12 stores in western Washington, five years later on our 10th birthday, we had over 400 stores spread across seventy-plus discrete markets around the U.S.”
Scott Svenson: MOD Pizza was US fastest-growing restaurant brand for 3-4 years
“Yeah, we were the fastest growing restaurant brand in the country for, I believe, four years. Three or four years.”
Scott Svenson: Over 95% of MOD Pizza's pre-pandemic business was in-store
“Prior to the pandemic, 95% plus of our customers would come into Maud, a restaurant, and either walk down the line and build their own product, or pick up their product and take it out.”
The other half of the tape: Scott Svenson's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Guy Raz 1
Statements about Scott Svenson, by other people (1)
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
How I Built This 1
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Scott's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Managing Partner, The Sienna Group | 3 | 28 | 83% 10/12 | full record on How I Built This → |