Kayla Edidin

COO

Kayla Edidin is a growth-driven restaurant executive with more than two decades of experience building, operating, and scaling, multi-unit restaurant businesses across the United States. Her career sits at the intersection of operations excellence, franchise growth, and disciplined leadership, with a consistent, repeatable pattern of outperforming targets across both emerging and legacy restaurant brands.

Most recently she served as Vice President of Franchise Development for Mike’s Red Tacos, Kayla has played a pivotal role in the brand’s rapid national expansion. In just six months, she has sold over 200 franchise units and generated more than $2 million in franchise fee revenue for that company. Her effectiveness in this role is directly tied to her deep, hands-on understanding of the restaurant business from unit-level economics and site selection to labor, food cost, and execution at scale. Franchise candidates respond to her credibility as a true operator, not just a salesperson, which has driven both velocity and quality of growth.

Prior to Mike’s Red Tacos, Kayla served as Senior Director of Franchise Development for Perkins American Food Co. and Huddle House, where she was the primary driver behind record-breaking franchise signings, expansion into new and underpenetrated markets, and renewed reinvestment from existing franchise partners. She personally designed and executed a sales process that attracted high-quality, multi-unit operators resulting in the strongest development performance in brand history. Her credibility with franchisees was rooted in lived experience: she understood the numbers, the people, and the pressure of running restaurants profitably.

Previously, as Senior Director of Franchise Operations, Kayla led enterprise-level operational performance across a 230-unit system. She built and managed high-performing leadership teams, consistently exceeded EBITDA and sales goals, and helped deliver the strongest guest metrics in company history. Under her leadership, multiple new restaurant openings shattered sales records including highest single-day, opening weekend, and opening week performance. She was also a key leader during the COVID crisis, guiding franchise partners through cash-flow preservation, cost controls, and operational pivots that kept businesses alive.

Earlier in her career, Kayla held senior leadership roles with Quiznos, where she oversaw 310 restaurants nationwide, managed full pre-opening development, and drove sustained unit growth and financial performance, and with Mary Kay, where she built a sales organization from zero to over 100 team members in four months and ranked in the top 1% nationally for sales production.

What differentiates Kayla is not just experience it’s pattern recognition and execution. She has repeatedly stepped into high-growth or high-pressure environments and produced measurable results through disciplined operations, talent development, and clear accountability. She leads from the front, is deeply fluent in restaurant-level economics, and has earned trust across boards, executive teams, franchise partners, and frontline operators. Kayla completed her EMBA in December 2025 at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, further strengthening her financial, strategic, and capital allocation expertise as she transitions from corporate leadership into portfolio ownership. Her focus is on acquiring and scaling restaurant assets where operational rigor, leadership, and hands-on execution create asymmetric upside for investors,