Nate Hybl has reached an inflection. It’s one of those points between contemplation and forward thinking you hold like a talisman when your business is heavy on hope and light on prosperity. That was 10 years ago. Hybl had just opened gusto! on Peachtree Road in Atlanta after three years of raising capital and a well-worn journey of steering his busted minivan across the city. Hybl, a former NFL quarterback who grew up in Hazlehurst, Georgia, a city of about 4,000 residents three hours southeast of Atlanta, says he’s humbled, and he admits it’s cliché to take that stance. But for gusto! to get this far? He really isn’t sure how else you’d put it. “I’m very proud,” Hybl says.
gusto! brought a fresh and healthy accessible bowl and wrap concept to Atlanta during a time when there simply weren’t that many in the marketplace (unlike now). Hybl wanted to serve a product he sought as a consumer and one he felt the city’s dining scene sorely lacked. The name itself comes from self-help guide guru Dale Carnegie and was featured in Hybl’s first investor pitchbook. “Today is life—the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake … let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.” The quote lines stores today and there’s a painted portrait of Carnegie in the company’s office. Employees ask guests, “What’s your gusto?” before building their greens or grains bowl or flatbread. And there’s a lot more to the adage that weaves through what Hybl is building as a company (more on this later).
Hybl says gusto! has evolved from looking to fill a void in the marketplace to becoming “Atlanta’s bowl brand.” And in turn, much of the 10-year celebration in 2024 is going to focus on gratitude. The brand worked with Atlanta artist Lonnie Garner to create an 8-foot thank you card that’s going to be signed by leadership, field teammates, and guests with messages for the city. It will travel shop-to-shop before being presented to Atlanta. Additionally, gusto! plans to share the spotlight with 10 leaders and purposeful organizations based in Atlanta on social media and its website. Lastly, gusto! will add Panko Crispy Chicken to the menu as a surprise of sorts for customers—one of the fast-food industry’s hottest products done in a lighter format, like gusto! loyalists would expect.
A LOOK BACK: How gusto! is Building the Human-Connection Restaurant Brand
That about covers the reflection part for Hybl. Reaching 10 years, though, also presents a timestamp to pause and envision what’s next. Hybl sees gusto!’s coming act as a threefold chapter: One, can Atlanta’s bowl brand become a regional concept? Hybl says gusto! has internally put in the hours to become an operationally sound fast casual that understands pillars of scale.
Or to phrase it differently, gusto! has come to understand what its non-negotiables are. Things like grating cheese versus having it arrive in a bag. Making sauces by hand. Chopping ingredients and whisking vinaigrettes.


It will be on Hybl and leadership to tell that story as gusto! reaches new markets. A balance, he says, between localizing the concept (which doesn’t franchise) and holding to its Atlanta roots. “I think the job as a brand leader is for me to ensure that we are toting our history and our brand DNA and certainly our values with us wherever we go,” Hybl says. “And even some of the storytelling. Hey, this guy is from South Georgia. Small town. I think that resonates all over the South. OK, Alabama has a small town. Tennessee has small towns. North Carolina has small towns. I think it’s both. I think it’s making sure where we came from and why we came from is clear, but additionally, because I’ve watched sweetgreen, CAVA, all these big boys and girls enter our ecosystem, I’ve watched them latch on to local charities and local agencies and local ideas and local communities and really do a pretty good job of not feeling like a national chain.”
That will be the wide-level goal. It will play out in interior and exterior design. gusto! expects to hire local artists and have leadership vet and embed itself into markets so expansion is as deliberate as it is opportunistic. “We need to be us.” Hybl says. “If we pop four stores in downtown Nashville, we want to become Nashvillians, within reason, because it’s a new community.”
It’s a path Hybl has had to lay out beyond the operational. Any founder can relate to scaling something this intimate and understanding you can’t be everywhere, and what that means for all facets of growth. “We’ll do it thoughtfully and I’m sure I’ll play a role in terms of how to maintain who we are,” he says. “But I think it’s one of the things I’ve been working on the last couple of years. It’s about separating Nate from the brand. This is a big part of me and vice versa, since the beginning. But getting down on paper and articulating what is this brand, what does it stand for, what does it not stand for, who is it, why is it, what is it, and it’s a weird thing to say, but if you want to be a lasting brand, this stuff has to, if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, she has to continue and that magic has to be unbottled, and so we’ve been working on that.”
Before getting into some of the base efforts beyond, gusto! also has non-traditional growth on its mind. Namely, Hybl imagines opening in airports, which was in the original business plan 14 years ago. He’s eager to “take the training wheels” off that avenue as an option. The model isn’t so different from how gusto! disrupted the Atlanta food world a decade ago. It wants to offer a quick, healthy alternative in a space that’s not always known for marrying quality with speed.
Hybl says gusto! has been trying to get its foot in the door at the Atlanta airport, often labeled the busiest in the world. But, naturally, it’s not the easiest spot to secure real estate. Hybl compared it to finding a storefront in New York City. “We’re going to keep pressing,” he says. “Our brand has matured. Our product and our process has matured, from kind of homemade and amateur hour to being professional and being able to replicate at scale.”
The fast casual is also exploring ghost kitchens as a potentially viable path. It opened its first in August. The Dallas entry marked gusto!’s first Texas unit (the rest are in Georgia). Guests can order on Uber Eats or walk up to tap takeout from a kiosk. Catering is slated for the future as well.
In plain terms, gusto! is keeping its options open.

Yet at this development unfolds, Hybl returns to the Carnegie mindset and something that’s been on his mind from the early days, although not quite the very beginning. Hybl figured gusto! would work because it offered high-quality, healthy food fast. It was a value proposition that fooled him into thinking that’s all there was, he says. Quickly, Hybl realized hospitality was a brick wall if you weren’t a “human-being business.” So he studied companies like Delta and Chick-fil-A to understand what he now refers to as the “the human P&L.”
Ten years in, the mission statement has taken sight at becoming “the most empowering brand in the restaurant industry.”
“There’s so much opportunity, so much whitespace to chase the pursuits of being a powerful employer brand in the restaurant space,” he says. “It feels like a lot of chains are product companies. Maybe even marketing companies. Real estate companies. And it’s challenging for sure.”
Hybl says he often gets notes from operators about how they can find room on the P&L. Or the bandwidth. The answer is constant reinvestment. And so, 1–2 percent always goes right back into gusto!’s ecosystem for personal and professional growth of people. “What I would say is, it’s going great on paper. But it takes an absolute intentional North Star and a commitment to reinvest in yourself and reinvest in your teams and your people.” Hybl says.
This, too, strengthens the foundation of scale. It’s difficult to spread the brand without buy-in, he says. Those layers beneath Hybl (if he gets hit by a bus, as he says) need to drive the brand in a singular direction.
One thing gusto! does is host “Shake Yourself Awake” events for leaders. The brand has tried everything from rappelling down a cliff as a team to field days to feeding hungry families. They’ve paraglided in the Tennessee mountains and dove off a five-story cliff in Chattanooga into the water below.
Coming up, Hybl is going to ask leaders to do a “12-hour walk.” They don’t actually have to walk, but they need to unplug and leave the tech dark for half a day.
“Chasing a growth mindset means acknowledging that comfort and growth do not co-exist,” he says, quoting a line from former IBM CEO Ginni Rometty. “There is plenty to do, but we are, as the leaders at gusto!, pushing ourselves from a brand standpoint to do our better. And the more you do that, then hard things get easier.”



Roughly a year and a half ago, still feeling the ripples of COVID, gusto! created a “People Department” that employs five leaders—a rather large investment for a chain with locations in the teens. It’s led today by Cody Hicks, who previously served as gusto!’s fractional chief of staff. Hybl says he wanted to make the monetary commitment, as rare as it was for a company this small, before “this gets big and some of the dynamics change.”
“I wanted to push us toward conscious capitalism,” he says. “And I felt like the People Department’s job was to grow and develop. Not just headlines and press releases, but really fight for dollars and sense to grow our people personally and professionally.”
“The first is, it’s the right thing to do,” Hybl continues. “Our people in the field are the most important human beings in the entire company and it also makes business sense. It just makes sense to me to invest in our humans and happy teammates produce happier transactions and happier customers. So I think a lot of people talk about it but we are trying to put our money where our mouth is. Our retention is stickier because of it.”
gusto!’s full-time team members are eligible to enroll in comprehensive health benefits, including company contributions for medical, dental, and vision coverage. Shift leads receive five days of paid time off, managers seven, associate operators 10 days, and LOP employees 15. Employee also have access to tip sharing, wages before payday, flexible scheduling, and food perks.
Hybl believes someone’s manager can influence their mental health more than essentially anyone else in their life. It’s updated boiler plate is “to [re]fuel the human spirit with life-giving food and good energy for those open to self-betterment.”
The fresh branding focuses on being the “re.” As explained: “Good energy permeates everything we do at gusto! But no one has limitless energy, so we need to rejuvenate one another when our reserves are running low, and we need a recharge. That restorative energy can come from our food, it can come from a considerate teammate, or it can be renewed from our vibrant community.”
More broadly, the theme this year for gusto! will continue to center on being “Gratefull,” spelled incorrectly on purpose to tie in food. The brand’s relationship over the years to Atlanta, whether founding or feeding hospitals during the pandemic, is something Hybl wants to honor as the horizon promises larger things. “That’s really what’s on my desk right now, gratitude and grateful,” he says, “and we want Atlanta to be proud of what we represent and what we’ve built and we’re about to show the love back. We’re going to try to drum up some good intention.”