About
We install the operating system that lets a restaurant owner run a multi-location business without living inside it.
Alex's 735 locations are the proof. Coaching is the installation. The Scaling Engine OS™ is the delivery mechanism.
Where the system comes from
Built at 735 locations before it was taught at one.
Alex Yanovsky built Sushi Master from a handful of stores to 735 locations, about 10,000 employees, and roughly $200 million a year in revenue, with a valuation of $509 million. He set out to build a thousand locations in five years and built seven hundred in six.
The thing he says most often about that period is a paradox: he worked less with seven hundred locations than he did with three. Not because the business got easier, but because he stopped being the manager and built the system that managed. Every location ran the same daily discipline, the same reports, the same meeting rhythm, and the same org chart.
The Scaling Engine exists to install that system in independent restaurants. It started as coaching, because that is how the system gets installed: with the owner and the managers on a call, being taught from the source. The playbooks and the software came after, to make the installation repeatable.
The company is a family business. Elan Yanovsky, Alex's son, founded The Scaling Engine and runs it. Alex leads the coaching. Several of the ads and interviews on this site are Elan talking about his father, which is why the voice is the way it is.
Alex Yanovsky · record
- CompanySushi Master
- Locations built735
- Employees10,000
- Annual revenue at peak$200M+
- Valuation$509M
- Original goal1,000 in 5 yrs
- Built700 in 6 yrs
Head coach and spokesperson
Alex Yanovsky
Alex teaches with analogies and blunt questions. Business is a sport and he is the coach. The navigation system needs point B before point A. The doctor writes everything down. His job on a call is to look at an owner's numbers and structure and say what he would do, then teach the managers how to do it.
Every member gets him live, every week, with their managers welcome on the call when a system is being taught.
How we work
Five things we believe, and run the company by.
Rooms before people
Design the structure the business needs, then fill it. A company will be a hundred years old and still have a kitchen room, a floor room, a finance room. The people change a hundred times. The structure is permanent.
Results come from an independent source
Never ask a manager what the result was. The point of sale, the schedule, and the bank report the result. The manager reports the analysis and the action.
The what, not the how
The owner sets the goal, the standard, and the number. The manager owns how it gets done. An owner who decides the how cannot leave the building.
Every meeting teaches
The leader is 95 percent teacher. Meetings exist to teach, coach, and solve problems. Everything else is a memo.
Real numbers or nothing
Every client figure on this site is from a recorded interview, quoted verbatim and dated. Alex's own numbers are credentials, not promises.
The team
Small on purpose.
Alex Yanovsky
Head coach and spokesperson
Built Sushi Master to 735 locations. Leads every Founders Board call and every live event.
Elan Yanovsky
Founder and CEO
Runs The Scaling Engine. Meets every applicant before they join the board.
The Founders Board
Build a restaurant company that runs without its owner.
Apply in five minutes. If it looks like a fit, we book a call to walk through the operation and decide together.
Results vary. Client outcomes shown on this site are real but not typical, and depend on each owner's business, market, team, and effort. The Scaling Engine provides education and coaching and does not guarantee revenue, profit, or growth.