Temple Fox School Alum’s honeygrow Restaurant Expands
A Temple University Fox School of Business alum plans to expand the reach of honeygrow, one of the Philadelphia metro’s most forward-thinking companies.
honeygrow CEO and founder Justin Rosenberg, who earned his Fox Global MBA in 2009, recently announced his plans to open a branch of the restaurant on Temple’s North Philadelphia campus.
Rosenberg said, “I’m a Temple guy, I wrote a chunk of my business plan for honeygrow at Alter Hall, and the business is very much a #TempleMade concept. This makes perfect sense… Temple University is on the rise, and it’s a location that I’m beyond confident will work.” The store will be located in commercial space in Morgan Hall, a student residence building.
honeygrow’s fast-casual concept is based upon using local, seasonal ingredients for salads and stir fries. The restaurant currently has seven locations and plans to open nine more in 2016. The business has experienced rapid expansion in the past year, receiving $25 million in funding from Miller Investment Management. This will go toward the store’s expansion and upgrades to the business’ technology platform.
The company’s philosophy of sustainability filters through all of its operations. Rosenberg plans to re-locate honeygrow’s headquarters from Center City Philadelphia to the Fishtown neighborhood in an effort to support that area’s exponential development.
He said:
“We’ve renovated a warehouse where we’ll have 30 corporate employees to supplement the 300 employees we have in the field… That’s where we’ll have our commissary, where our chef and culinary director David Katz will work on our sauces, dressings, and beyond. There has always been a deep passion for the product – inclusive of where we are sourcing it to how we are training our staff to prepare it, care for it, and work with it. Everything counts.”
About the Author
Maggie Boccella
Maggie Boccella, a lifelong resident of Philadelphia, is a freelance writer, artist and photographer. She has consulted on various film and multimedia projects, and she also serves as a juror for the city's annual LGBTQIA Film Festival.
