A breakfast-focused quick-service restaurant concept launched in Toronto in 2020 is aiming to accelerate its growth with plans to open about 11 new locations this year, as founder Jason Yu sets his sights on eventually building a 300-store network.
Yu, founder of Egg Club, said the brand currently operates nine locations after opening its first outlet on Sept. 12, 2020, at 88 Dundas St. East. The expansion push marks a significant step for a business that began as a niche concept designed to fill what he described as a gap between traditional fast-food breakfast offerings and sit-down dining.
“Our goal is 300 locations,” Yu said in an interview, adding that further announcements related to the company’s growth are expected later this year.
Identifying a market gap
Yu said the idea for Egg Club emerged in 2018 as he evaluated the competitive landscape for breakfast food. He observed what he believed were two dominant segments in the market: large quick-service chains offering speed and convenience, and full-service restaurants delivering higher-quality meals but requiring more time from customers.
“There’s nothing in between,” he said. “There’s no QSR for breakfast that’s made to order.”
The concept he developed sought to position itself between those extremes by offering food priced slightly above mass-market fast food while emphasizing freshness and quality. The goal, he said, was to replicate elements of the sit-down dining experience while maintaining a takeaway-friendly model.
“That’s when I kind of saw the niche — why don’t we make it just a bit more expensive than [traditional fast food], make it made-to-order, a lot more high quality, like you’re sitting at fine dining, but at the same time it’s on the go,” he said.
Background in restaurants and training
Yu said his decision to pursue entrepreneurship was influenced in part by his upbringing. Born in South Korea and raised in Vancouver, he grew up in a family that operated restaurants and began helping in the business at age 14.
“Being a restaurateur is in my blood,” he said.
He later studied business management at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Vancouver before enrolling in culinary school at the Art Institute of Vancouver. While he described his formal business education as less impactful than hands-on experience, he credited his culinary training with helping him develop Egg Club’s menu.
“Understanding the fundamentals — like how to cook eggs, what’s the temperature, what’s carryover cooking — all that stuff … definitely helped me a lot,” he said.
Yu said he personally designed the menu, which features items such as breakfast sandwiches made with Japanese milk bread, a product he believes helped differentiate the brand in its early days.
Managing risk and uncertainty
Like many entrepreneurs, Yu said one of the biggest challenges during the startup phase was uncertainty over whether the concept would resonate with customers.
He recalled spending days observing competitor locations and tracking customer volumes in an effort to assess market potential.
“I was sitting in a car for about five days, for 12 hours, looking at some competitors’ customers. I was counting customers,” he said. “But you’ll never know … when you go live, you’ll never know if the idea will work.”
The novelty of the offering also contributed to early concerns, he added, noting that customers were unfamiliar with some of the brand’s products.
“People had never seen Japanese milk bread with an egg inside and special sauce. There was nothing like it out there,” Yu said. “That was one of the scariest moments for us.”
Designing for scalability
Beyond establishing demand, Yu said Egg Club’s leadership focused early on building a model that could be replicated across multiple markets. Questions about franchisability influenced decisions ranging from menu development to operational procedures.
“Even on day one of the 2018 idea, I was always asking myself: is it franchisable?” he said.
He described the process as a balance between maintaining product quality and ensuring that systems were simple enough for franchisees to execute consistently.
“When we were making the sauce, we asked ourselves: is it franchisable? Is it easy for franchisees to understand?” he said. “At the same time, we had to make a delicious menu. That was another kind of engineering we had to think through.”
Yu said he believed from the outset that the concept had potential to scale, citing its relatively streamlined menu and what he characterized as a lack of direct competitors targeting the same segment.
“We were really in the blue ocean for this concept,” he said.
Expansion outlook
Now based in Toronto, Yu said Egg Club is focused on accelerating its physical footprint while maintaining momentum from its initial growth phase. The planned openings this year would more than double its current store count if completed as expected.
He suggested further developments are in progress but declined to provide specifics.
“Good things are coming for us at the moment,” he said. “We have big news coming this year as well that I cannot disclose right now.”
Looking ahead, Yu said the company intends to continue expanding as long as market conditions and operational performance support its ambitions.
“So we want to go as much as we can right now,” he said.
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