Westborough Small Biz Profile: The Simple Greek

WESTBOROUGH, MA—Michael Abasciano is one of the owners of the relatively-new The Simple Greek in Westborough, and with a background in accounting, it's his first jump into the restaurant business.

Abasciano grew up in Princeton and currently live in Ashland, and opened up The Simple Greek with his business partner, Sean Galligan. The Simple Greek is a new franchise concept that started in Pennsylvania several years ago and then was on the hit CNBC TV show, The Profit. It was originally called My Big Fat Greek Gyro and the name was changed after airing on The Profit to The Simple Greek.

The Simple Greek is located at 290 Turnpike Road in Westborough.

When did you open? We opened up the location the last week of February 2017.

What made you decide to open this type of business? And why this location? We believe that there is a lot of opportunity within the fast casual market for Greek food. If you look at Chipotle, Qdoba, Moe’s, etc. they are all based on a Mexican food concept but there really is not a lot of fast casual Greek concepts. We looked at locations everywhere from Shrewsbury to Boston, but believe that the mix of residents and businesses in the Westborough area was a great opportunity for us.

What do you like best about it? It’s exciting to be part of a new franchise concept. We are learning every day and each day allows us an opportunity to improve our operations and guest experience. It’s been enjoyable spending time in the community introducing our brand to residents and business folks.

Biggest struggle? Introducing the brand to the community and to figure out where we are located. While we are a franchise, there are only twelve or so locations throughout the country so we are working hard to get potential customers and guests to know that we exist.

What do you see for the future? We are excited about the future. Our goal is to continue to make our Westborough location successful and then open up other locations throughout the state. Where would you all like to see us open up next?

Politics and business - how does it affect you? The economy affects us as depending on how the economy is people will decide whether to eat out less or more. I don’t think we are affected much by politics, at least I hope not!

Name another local business you’d send customers to: Zitis is a fantastic Italian restaurant located right next to us. They have the best pizza around!

Know a small business in Westborough that deserves the spotlight? Tell us about that, or any other news and tips, at charlene.arsenault@patch.com.

Photo Credit: The Simple Greek