He Went from Tech CEO to Dishwasher. Now, He’s Behind 320 Restaurants and $750 Million in Assets.

Andrew K. Smith discusses how storytelling drives scale, how founders lead and how family stays part of the journey.

Key Takeaways

• Smith built Savory Fund alongside his wife, Shauna, who now serves as CEO. Their approach blends personal and professional life, proving that work-life balance can be redefined as integration.
• For Savory Fund, storytelling is not just a branding exercise. Smith sees it as a core business tool.

On his first day in the restaurant business, Andrew K. Smith was the dishwasher.

Not the investor. Not the strategist. Not the guy fixing tech stacks or analyzing labor margins. Just the guy at the sink, scrubbing trays, rinsing off sheet pans.

It wasn’t exactly what he had pictured when he told his wife he was ready for a new challenge.

Today, Smith is the managing partner and co-founder of Savory Fund, a restaurant investment firm known for helping brands scale nationally. But before the boardrooms and portfolios, he started where few investors do: behind the dish pit.

Rewind a year. His wife had launched a bakery, a fast-casual dessert concept that opened in the middle of the 2008 financial crash. Smith, still deep in his tech CEO role, didn’t exactly love the idea. “In my mind, I’m like, that’s the worst idea,” he now admits. “But you know what I responded? I was like, ‘I think it’s a great idea. Of course. And we should absolutely do that.’”