First Watch
Culinary Strategy & Menu Optimization • Innovation Pipeline Development • Recipe & Product Development • Seasonal LTO Strategy • Brand & Guest Experience Evolution • Operational & Menu Simplification
Our decade-long partnership with First Watch helped transform the brand into a category-defining leader in breakfast, brunch, and lunch through continuous menu innovation, operational refinement, and trend-forward product development.
~650
RESTAURANTS
NATIONWIDE
2x
MENU MASTERS
AWARD WINNER
+13.8%
YOY SYSTEM WIDE
SALES GROWTH
+17.3%
YOY TOTAL
REVENUE GROWTH
What were the aims of TCE’s partnership with First Watch?
When we began working with First Watch, the brand had strong fundamentals: a loyal guest base, a differentiated daytime-only position, and a heritage rooted in hospitality, quality, and freshness. But the menu and guest experience needed to evolve to keep pace with the brand’s growth ambitions.
We noticed that First Watch had permission to lead, but needed a more disciplined culinary point of view to do so. The opportunity was not to reinvent the brand, but to sharpen what made it special and translate that into a scalable innovation system.
We set out to:
Modernize the offering while preserving the brand’s core DNA
Build a scalable culinary strategy to support aggressive growth
Create a continuous pipeline of innovation to drive traffic and relevance
Establish a clearer leadership position within the morning and daytime dining segment
Ultimately, we partnered with First Watch to reposition the brand as a leader in daytime dining—not just a participant in the category.
“The TCE team is very much an extension of our culinary team - their exceptional insights, creative and thorough approach to presentations and unique perspective on all things industry-related provide us with the tools needed to continue leading the pack on many fronts.”
How did TCE engage customers with the menu items?
We focus on creating a balance of comfort and discovery—ensuring guests can return for favorites while always finding something new.
Through years of trial, testing, and iteration, we learned that First Watch guests were highly willing to opt into new ingredients, unexpected flavor combinations, and more contemporary culinary cues when those ideas were anchored in familiar, trusted forms. Changing too many variables at once created risk for the guest; rooting innovation in recognizable platforms created confidence.
We saw that if we anchored bold flavors and emerging ingredients in heavy-hitting forms—like hashes, toasts, juices, and brunch-friendly handhelds—we could drive trial without making the guest feel lost. This allowed innovation to feel exciting, but still intuitive.
To do this, we:
Introduced craveable, highly visual menu items that resonate with modern diners
Used familiar menu formats as vehicles for more progressive ingredients and flavors
Elevated naming and presentation to help products stand apart on the menu and online
Built an LTO promotional strategy that creates urgency, repeat visits, and seasonal anticipation
Designed menu architecture to encourage add-ons, attachments, and complete meal occasions
This approach allowed us to evolve the menu without losing the loyal guest base that built the brand.
How did TCE leverage marketplace trends to create new menu items?
We don’t chase trends—we translate them.
Our approach starts with deep trend analysis, but the real work is understanding where a trend sits on the adoption curve and whether First Watch has the right to lead it. We noticed that many brands were reacting to trends after they had already reached the mainstream. First Watch had an opportunity to move earlier—especially in breakfast, brunch, fresh produce, and daytime beverage—if we could translate emerging cues through the brand’s own point of view.
We uncovered that the strongest opportunities were not always the loudest trends. They were the trends that could be made ownable through First Watch’s strengths: fresh preparation, seasonal produce, bright flavors, daytime relevance, and a guest base open to discovery when grounded in familiar forms.
Our filter is rooted in three lenses:
Customer relevance — does it resonate with the First Watch guest?
Operational reality — can it be executed consistently at scale?
Brand fit — does it feel authentic to the experience?
We actively source inspiration through marketplace exploration, competitive benchmarking, secondary trend research, and ongoing R&D.
The result is a pipeline of ideas that feel both innovative and ownable—grounded in the broader marketplace, but unmistakably suited to First Watch.
How did TCE evolve the menu to achieve First Watch’s objectives?
We built a disciplined innovation pipeline designed to directly support business performance.
The “how” was rooted in identifying where First Watch had the clearest right to win. We noticed that few brands in the category were meaningfully investing in seasonal produce, fresh fruit and vegetable preparation, or distinctive daytime beverage platforms at the unit level. At the same time, First Watch already had a philosophy of freshness and a brand idea around “Following the Sun” that could be made more tangible through the menu.
We saw that if we leaned into fresh preparation, peak-season produce, and hands-on culinary technique, we could create a stronger point of difference versus competitors relying more heavily on off-the-shelf ingredients.
Our work focused on:
Driving frequency through seasonal menus and LTOs that create new reasons to visit
Increasing check average through attachable beverages, sides, shareables, and premium builds
Expanding audience appeal through health-forward, produce-driven, and trend-relevant offerings
Building culinary leadership by identifying trends First Watch could credibly own in the daytime space
Supporting scalability by simplifying execution, documenting recipes, and aligning with operations and supply chain
This ensured the menu wasn’t just more exciting—it became a true growth lever for the business.
As First Watch scaled rapidly, we worked closely with their team to balance innovation with execution.
We knew that a great idea only mattered if it could be replicated consistently across a growing national footprint. The challenge was to preserve the craft, freshness, and culinary personality of the brand while building systems that could scale.
We knew that innovation could create complexity if it introduced too many new ingredients, procedures, or executional variables. We saw that by working within existing pantry strengths, trusted vendor relationships, and clear operational guardrails, we could introduce newness without overburdening the restaurants.
Key challenges included:
Maintaining consistency across a growing restaurant base
Building recipes that could be replicated over and over at scale
Managing supply chain complexity for new ingredients and seasonal produce
Avoiding back-of-house strain while introducing new items
Ensuring innovation did not outpace operational capability
Leaning into trusted supply chain partners that could support consistent execution
Our role was to make the menu more impactful without making it more complicated.
What were First Watch’s major operational challenges to overcome?
What were the business outcomes for First Watch?
Our partnership helped transform First Watch into one of the most successful and fastest-growing brands in its category.
By honoring the heritage of the brand—its founders’ beliefs, hospitality ethos, and commitment to freshness—we helped create a menu strategy that could welcome loyal guests while inviting new ones in. We refined the innovation system over time, learning where First Watch had the most permission to lead and where its guests were most willing to follow.
Outcomes included:
Sustained revenue and system-wide sales growth, including +17.3% total revenue growth and +13.8% system-wide sales growth in Q1 2026
Growth to nearly 650 restaurants nationwide, with 648 system-wide restaurants reported at the end of Q1 2026
Establishment as a trend-setting leader in breakfast, brunch, and daytime innovation
Development of award-winning menu items and high-performing LTOs
Creation of a repeatable innovation process that connects marketplace insight, culinary creativity, operations, sourcing, and business performance
Today, First Watch continues to scale with a clear point of view—supported by a menu strategy designed to evolve with the market and strengthen the brand’s leadership in daytime dining.