These millennials went from being a $5-an-hour construction worker to launching (and selling) Wingstop in the UK for $532 million — with no restaurant experience

And it’s all thanks to a chance meeting dating back to when he was just 18 and wasn’t sure what he really wanted to do with his life. He loves Many Gen Zers Today, millennials have decided to move on university He tried his hand at the commercial industry when he was sixteen years old.

He had been working as a laborer on a construction site for two years when he met a real estate developer. Like Grogan, he had also not gone to university and had worked his way up from the bottom, so he began mentoring the teenager.

“You meet certain people in life that change the direction of life,” Grogan said exclusively. luckAdding that the guidance led to training in Dragon that (UK equivalent Shark tank) star James Caan’s private equity firm in central London.

“So I started to understand how deals were put together. I was surrounded by a number of entrepreneurs, and that quickly pushed me to do something more with my life.”

He added: “This quickly prompted me to want to leave the world of work to start my own project in the world of residential and real estate development.” “During this journey, you have to meet a lot of people, and pitch money. So I kind of understood the fundraising process, and having worked in the private equity world, I understood the business plans and pitches.”

His real estate career paved the way for everything that followed, including meeting Sahota and Lewin – the men who eventually helped him launch Wingstop UK. They met while working in real estate and real estate development, but decided to take a chance Fast food seven years ago.

The trio saw the American cult being followed and wanted to bring it to London. The problem? No one believed in them.

It took a cold email and 50 “no”s before a $532 million yes came up

Grogan first discovered Wingstop through a line in a Rick Ross track – the Grammy-nominated rapper was a franchise owner in the US and promoted the brand heavily through his music. Wanting to do so, he tried his luck by sending a cold email to the parent company in Texas.

“That’s how we discovered Wingstop,” Grogan says. “We Googled it, and in September 2016, I cold emailed Wingstop HQ: ‘Hey, you don’t have a presence in Europe. We’d love to launch the brand in the UK.” Honestly, my thought process was, ‘I’ll figure it out later.’ It was a bit of a hit.

To his surprise, the American team responded positively, and Grosjean’s founders joined the agreement together. “We successfully convinced the US parent company that, firstly, we could raise the necessary capital and, secondly, that we would assemble a team around us. Yes, we had no experience, but we identified a gap in the market. No one in the UK food and drink world was speaking authentically to younger consumers in the way that brands like Gymshark and Nando’s were,” he explains.

“We didn’t have to worry about the product or even the food at first. We later learned how difficult operations are in the restaurant industry, but our naivety allowed us to jump into the challenge without any preconceived notions. That was a gift.”

But getting the green light was just the first hurdle: what followed were months and months of rejection from 50 investors.

“Three young men with no experience in hospitality end up trying to promote a brand that no one had heard of in Europe at the time – which is a big red flag,” Grogan continued. “We had a lot of setbacks…We got a lot of rejection and had a lot of stopping and starting, but by the skin of our teeth, we made it happen.”

One of Britain’s largest fast food brand acquisitions

In the end, it took nearly a year to get that approval. “If we had stopped a week ago, we would not be sitting here now,” he said, adding that every rejection was a lesson. “Ultimately, by the 50th show, a lot of the concerns raised by early investors had either been figured out or we had an answer for.”

By then, they had secured what is now the location of their flagship restaurant in London’s West End. “So it made it more realistic for subsequent investors who came to talk to us,” Grogan adds. “We say among ourselves that the stars have aligned on this journey, and this may have been one of the first stars to align for us.”

The stars have truly aligned for Grosjean and the team. They built the UK Wingstop brand from scratch. Continue targeting US branches of Generation Z and millennial consumers, using social media and the Celebrities of the moment. Today there are 57 Wingstop locations in the UK.

Nearly nine years after sending the first cold email, the trio sold a majority stake in Lemon Pepper Holdings (parent company of Wingtop UK) to California private equity firm Sixth Street before the New Year. Already, it has plans to expand to… 200 sites in the UK in the next five years. The deal represents one of the largest acquisitions of a restaurant brand in Britain.

Grogan, a 35-year-old Briton who had never owned a previous restaurant, received his share of the £400 million ($532 million) windfall.

Reflecting on his meteoric rise from the construction sites, Grogan tells the next generation of aspiring entrepreneurs that it’s real-world experience – not lectures – that shapes success.

“Unless you want to become a doctor or a lawyer, university is a waste of time. The experiences you can get in the business world, or with a mentor, or by becoming street smart, are far more valuable than a textbook.”

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