20 Brands To Watch

Sometimes you want to eat healthy. Other times, well, not so much.

Whatever your cravings, Las Vegas-based SkinnyFats has you covered. The extensive menu, which includes allday

breakfast, tacos and “things in bowls,” is split into two sections. Each dish has a version on “the healthy side,”

which is 600 calories or less, as well as a counterpart on “the happy side,” which is all about indulgence.

This dual approach to flavorful food is one of the primary reasons that SkinnyFats, founded in 2013, is finishing

2018 with a bang. Notable highlights include:

• A completed expansion of SkinnyFats’s original location (from 1,800 to about 4,500 square feet),

including a new commissary kitchen and some much-needed seating. “We went from 33 to 85 seats

and immediately put them all to use,” Slobusky said.

• Three new Las Vegas-area locations that opened in early December, bringing the total location

count to seven.

• The grand opening of SkinnyFats’s new Dallas store.

• Expanded distribution of SkinnyFats’s house-made pineapple ketchup to approximately 90 grocery

stores throughout Hawaii.

So what does Slobusky do now?

“I’m going to take a break for about five minutes,” he said with a laugh.

Looking ahead to 2019, Slobusky has no plans to slow SkinnyFats’s momentum. Arguably the biggest project

of the year will be the brand’s new 12,000-square-foot food hall in Salt Lake City, Utah, which will break ground

in January. Called SkinnyFats Hall Pass, the space will accommodate eight restaurants and two bars, giving the

SkinnyFats team plenty of room to try new food concepts.

“We’re looking to bring in talented chefs to go concept-by-concept and remove a lot of the guesswork and things

we’ve spent the last five years learning the hard way,” Slobusky said. “We’re removing that process so the chefs

can focus on the food.”

And if Slobusky decides to bring in chefs outside the SkinnyFats umbrella, Hall Pass is equipped to expand

accordingly.

Speaking of expansion, growth is absolutely on the table for SkinnyFats in 2019 and beyond. Strategic growth

planning, in fact, is what helped lead Slobusky and SkinnyFats to the Dallas market.

“We continue to build out Las Vegas, our home market, but probably in the next 18 to 24 months, we’re going to

run out of logical real estate,” he said. “I’ll be in Dallas about 50 percent of the time, at least initially, then we’ll go

pretty quickly into building more stores. Just the sheer size of Dallas and the market has a lot of appeal.”

And if you visit a SkinnyFats location in Dallas, don’t be surprised to find a few regional menu additions.

“We’ll splice in a little barbecue here and there,” Slobusky said.

Additional growth is expected as a result of SkinnyFats’s franchise program, the documentation for which

Slobusky recently finished. Likely franchise markets include Salt Lake City, as well as Washington, D.C.

“We’re finishing a big wave of corporate stores, then we’ll spend our focus on franchise markets,” Slobusky said.

“We’re excited to get into 2019!”