Celebrating the Retirement of a First Watch Legend

Today, we celebrate the retirement of a legend.

More importantly to me, a dear friend and trusted mentor.

Ken Pendery, our former longtime CEO and subsequent board member and advisor to First Watch, is hanging up his hat after 38 years.

Ken’s First Watch story starts 1984, in the small town of Pacific Grove, California, when his friend John asked for his help opening a second location of his new breakfast concept. John called it First Watch, inspired by his witnessing of a shift change on a naval ship during an early morning run – the First Watch.

When I joined First Watch in August of 2006, we had about 60 restaurants and a corporate staff of even fewer than that. John had retired by that point, and out of necessity, Ken and I wore many hats and worked very closely together. In 2006, we didn’t have a real estate department. Marketing was handled by myself and one other person, and we didn’t have in-house culinary, HR, purchasing, legal or other critical functions.

We were scrappy and resourceful, to say the least, which meant Ken and I spent hundreds of days together on the road touring markets, visiting restaurants and attending conferences together. I would venture to guess that we’ve logged a million+ miles together in airplanes and rental cars, thousands of nights in hotels and enjoyed just as many meals together. When we weren’t traveling, we met for breakfast every morning to talk about the business and plan for the future. We worked hard, but we had our fun, too.

You learn a lot about a person when you spend that much time together. And I learned a lot about – and from – Ken.

Let’s start with the “about” piece.

I learned that Ken is an operator at heart and always has been. For decades, you’d be hard-pressed to not find him in one of our restaurants. He loved catching up with the staff, observing, coaching, training, welcoming regulars and jumping behind the line whenever duty called. I learned that his leadership has always been centered around our people – taking care of one another, making decisions in the best interest of our operators, leading by example and always listening. I learned that his family is the most important thing to him. His face always lights up when he talks about his kids Trey and Libby, and he and Jenny have always enjoyed their time together every Summer in Michigan.?

What I learned from Ken is a seemingly endless list – one that LinkedIn’s character limits won’t even begin to allow. To start, Ken taught me patience, how to value vendor partners and how important culture is to an organization. He taught me how to really read a P&L. He taught me about the importance of visiting restaurants and learning from our teams all about what was working well and more importantly, what wasn’t. He stressed the importance of work/life balance and made me promise that I would never miss my kids’ games or matches and that I was present for all the significant milestones in their lives. It was the greatest “perk” of my job and the one I am most grateful for today.

Ken served as CEO of our organization from the late ‘90s until 2018. During that time, we had three different private equity partners and grew from a couple dozen restaurants to more than 350. In 2018, he elected to take a well-deserved step back from the day-to-day hustle, and I was honored when he tapped me succeed him as CEO. At our annual operations leadership conference that year, I compared myself to the Yankees’ Didi Gregorious who had the impossible task of taking over at shortstop when Derek Jeter retired. I promised Ken that I would do everything in my power to make him proud and continue his legacy, but the fact is: You simply cannot replace a legend.

Today, as he steps down from our board of directors, rest assured that I, alongside our other board members and senior leaders, will continue to move forward with people first, as Ken has instilled in all of us.

Through his decades leading and serving the people of First Watch, he has made a lasting impact on more people than anyone else in our organization’s history. I write that without hesitation.

He has always made room at his table for so many of us – those interested in learning from his experiences, those going through a tough time and those looking to grow their careers at First Watch. I’m lucky that Ken lives only a few short miles from me, so we have a chance to continue to spend time together on weekends whenever I am in town. And while he is now “retired,” I know that I can (and will) drop in or reach out, and he will continue to offer his valuable guidance and perspective.

We are all better off having had the opportunity to work alongside Ken.

Please join me in congratulating Ken on his well-deserved retirement and thanking him for his servant leadership to First Watch during the past 38 years!

With gratitude,

Chris Tomasso