During a conversation with Smalls Sliders CEO Maria Rivera earlier this year, executive editor Alicia Kelso noted that she said she believes that “modular is the future.”
Indeed, the reason her company is targeting ambitious growth is because it’s leveraging 800-square-foot modular shipping container units manufactured elsewhere and then shipped to their location. Once a plot is prepared, Smalls can open a restaurant on top of it in as little as eight weeks. It takes less than a half hour to get the restaurant from the truck to being fully built.
Speed-to-market is an attractive benefit to modular development, especially given construction and permitting delays hindering much of the industry. Sticky Bird President Brandon Howard said his company’s recently opened modular location in Wichita, Kansas – through a partnership with Lange company’s ModuAll – allowed his team to move quickly and bring the product to a new city faster.