A new Mo' Bettahs Hawaiian Style Food is opening Friday at 14020 N. Rockwell Ave. in northern Oklahoma City, marking the chain's seventh Oklahoma restaurant and its 82nd location nationwide. The store sits in the Quail Springs area near the Memorial Road corridor, close to the Edmond border, and will serve dine-in, takeout and catering to guests across northern Oklahoma City and surrounding communities.
The chain has continued expanding across central Oklahoma. Mo' Bettahs added its sixth Oklahoma restaurant in February 2024 at 4611 North Kickapoo Avenue in Shawnee, offering drive-thru, takeout and dine-in service, as reported by RestaurantNews.com. The new North Rockwell location will operate Monday through Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. and stay closed Sundays, per RestaurantNews.com.
Free Tastings and a Ribbon-Cutting Before Opening Day
Before the doors officially open, Mo' Bettahs is throwing a community celebration on Thursday at the new restaurant. A friends and ‘ohana event runs from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., hosted by co-founders Kimo and Kalani Mack, offering complimentary mini plates and drinks, per the restaurant's opening announcement. A ribbon-cutting ceremony follows at 4:30 p.m., leading into a block-party-style celebration from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. featuring samples, merchandise and a caricature artist.
“Opening another restaurant gives us the chance to share even more of the food, hospitality and aloha we grew up with in Hawai'i,” Kalani Mack said, according to the same account. The Mack brothers grew up on O'ahu before founding Mo' Bettahs in Bountiful, Utah in 2008. The new location's menu centers on Hawaiian-style plate lunches, including teriyaki chicken and steak, katsu chicken, pulehu chicken and kalua pig.
Why This Corner of Quail Springs
The North Rockwell site sits within Deercrest Marketplace, a 140-acre commercial development and Walmart-anchored power center along the Kilpatrick Turnpike, according to a listing from Realmo. The center includes 850,000 square feet of pad sites exposed to more than 100,000 vehicles a day. The restaurant sits close to the Oklahoma City and Edmond municipal border — the kind of high-traffic suburban corridor that has anchored much of the chain's recent Oklahoma growth.
Mo' Bettahs' kitchen has kept a consistent identity as it has scaled. The chain imports Hawaiian-made Aloha Shoyu soy sauce for its house-made Teri Sauce and slow-roasts its kalua pig for 10 hours to maintain uniform quality across its corporate-owned stores, according to Fast Casual. The brand now operates in Utah, Idaho, Oklahoma, Texas, Nevada, Minnesota, Indiana and Arizona, growing to more than 80 locations through corporate-led expansion rather than franchising.
Private Equity Behind the Growth Spurt
That expansion has been powered by a shift in ownership. In October 2024, private investment firm Blue Marlin Partners and Dallas-based Trive Capital acquired a majority stake in Mo' Bettahs from Savory Fund, which kept a minority stake alongside the Mack brothers, according to a release from PR Newswire. During Savory Fund's majority ownership from 2017 to late 2024, the chain expanded nearly tenfold, from six Utah locations to 56 restaurants across seven states.
The financials behind that growth are notable. Mo' Bettahs generated approximately $80 million in sales in 2023 across 50 locations, a 178% three-year revenue increase, with average unit volumes near $2 million and store-level operating margins in the mid-20% range, according to Technomic data reported by Nation's Restaurant News. CEO Rob Ertmann, who was promoted to the role in September 2022 after joining as company president in 2021, has said strong unit economics drove private equity interest in the brand.
Growth Comes With Risk in Unfamiliar Markets
Not every expansion has stuck. Mo' Bettahs closed multiple locations and completely exited the Kansas City market in early 2026 after entering the region in 2022, illustrating that brand recognition can take longer to build in markets outside its established base, as TheStreet reported. The chain also faces competition in the Hawaiian plate lunch space from Hawaiian Bros Island Grill.
Mo' Bettahs has continued expanding into new markets this year. With its seventh Oklahoma restaurant, the company says it plans to keep spreading what it calls its aloha spirit to more communities through continued expansion.
