Panda Express generates $3.7 billion in annual revenue from 2,600 locations, with owners Andrew Peggy Cherng pocketing $935 million yearly. The founders spend heavily on employee development, sending thousands of hourly workers to Tony Robbins seminars and giving them copies of Think and Grow Rich.
I definitely admire Andrew Patern from Panda Express because they're a married couple who built this whole thing and they've owned the whole thing privately. They have 2,600 locations. They do $3.7 billion a year with 27% net margins and they take $935 million a year in personal income. And I think that's only possible because they have created a new vision for what they wanted the company to be about, which is about their employees.
He just sells like orange chicken. Like, that's not exactly inspiring, but like he employs like 20,000 people. He pays them to go to Tony Robbins. He gives them like the Think and Grow Rich books and he's like, Yeah, like the whole chicken shit, like that's cool and all, but I'm actually taking an hourly wage worker and we're trying to like elevate them. And so I'm like, oh, I can get behind that.
