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Executive Leadership

Operator first. Six roles in twelve years, store floor to vice president.

Twelve years at Pepper Palace, the national specialty retailer, advancing from store manager to vice president across three distinct mandates — then an independent advisory practice founded in 2026. Every number below is from the operating record.

Mandates

Permanent executive

Fractional leadership

PE-backed operating roles

Documents at the end of this page.

Scale

2014 – 2023

Store Manager → National Sales & Recruitment Manager → Sales Director → VP of Sales

Nine years leading the revenue side of a national retail scale-up — from running a single profitable store to setting the sales plan for every store in the chain. I built the training and recruitment functions, the field organization, the incentive system, and the performance-management discipline the chain ran on through its peak growth years.

Scope

  • 21 → 173 locations across the period; ~600 store employees at peak
  • ~7x system sales growth
  • 12-area-manager field organization
  • Two chain-wide POS migrations (2016, 2019)
  • Incentive compensation from associate to district level

Selected outcomes

  • +107% sales volume in 2021, the chain's peak growth year
  • Kept stores trading through COVID with phased, jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction reopening — +54% volume in 2020
  • Built the 154-store evaluation and triage model that later drove the portfolio decision
  • Supported the company's July 2021 equity event through due diligence preparation, CIM collaboration, and management presentations
System footprint, 2014–202550100150212014252016952019173PEAK2022142EVALUATED202494RETAINED2025
Fig. 1 — System footprint, 2014–2025: scale, peak, rationalization, keep decision

Transformation

2023 – 2025

VP, Store Operations & Development

Inherited the development department with zero staff and rebuilt it into the organization that executed the portfolio transformation — openings, retrofits, relocations, and more than a hundred wind-downs, often running concurrently — while absorbing the real estate function after the COO's departure.

Scope

  • Department rebuilt from 0 to 10, including an in-house tenant-improvement crew
  • 2024 development budget owned across 142 stores

Selected outcomes

  • ~160 store projects — 21 openings, 30+ relocations, 100+ wind-downs, including 21 simultaneous closures in January 2024
  • Second-generation retrofits standardized to a five-day cycle
  • Eight-store street-front cohort opened 2025 — 100% still trading a year later
  • Cross-functional playbooks for every site lifecycle event, with task-level ownership across six departments

Growth platform

2025 – 2026

VP, Real Estate & Franchise Development

Built the franchise function from zero — legal foundation in coordination with counsel, unit economics, sales engine, funding network, and operating standards — while delivering the real-estate plan that made the system fundable.

Scope

  • US FDD effective Aug 2025, Canadian FDD Oct 2025; registered in CA, NY, RI, TX, VA and WI
  • Item 19 rebuilt to P&L level; verified by independent legal review
  • 600+ market scored territory database across 61 states and provinces
  • Funding network: franchise loan brokers, brokerage and consultant channels, SBA Franchise Directory listing

Selected outcomes

  • First three franchise agreements awarded within ten months of launch (Canadian conversions)
  • Median occupancy cost brought from 22.1% to 17.1%, inside the 15–18% target band; portfolio shifted toward permanent leases; same-store sales returned to growth
  • 17-chapter Franchise Operations Manual as the contractual operating standard

Coverage, June 2026:PR NewswireYahoo FinanceMorningstarL'Express Franchise

Advisory

2026 – Present

Principal, Tavis Scholz Advisory

Independent practice providing fractional and interim operating leadership to franchisors and multi-unit operators.

The progression

I didn't study these problems from the outside. I advanced through every altitude of a national specialty retailer as it scaled — which is why I can work at board level in the morning and rebuild a field process in the afternoon.

That climb ran through every discipline this work touches:

  • Store-level operations
  • Sales leadership
  • Recruitment & training
  • Multi-unit management
  • Real estate
  • Construction & development
  • Franchise development
  • Financial & performance systems
  • Executive & ownership-level initiatives
  1. 06

    VP, Real Estate & Franchise Development

    Built the franchise system from zero; delivered the real-estate plan behind it

  2. 05

    VP, Store Operations & Development

    Rebuilt the development organization from zero staff; executed the portfolio rationalization

  3. 04

    VP of Sales

    Led sales and retail operations through the chain's peak growth years — 95 to 173 stores

  4. 03

    Sales Director

    Nearly quadrupled the footprint, 25 to 95 trading stores

  5. 02

    National Sales & Recruitment Manager

    Established the corporate training and recruitment functions

  6. 01

    Store Manager

    Ran a profitable unit; set benchmarks adopted across the retail division

Documents

The executive brief is the one-page branded profile; the résumé is the conventional recruiter document.

Download executive brief (PDF)Download résumé (PDF)