The secret sauce of Uncle Af’s, the #10 restaurant from Yelp’s Top 100

Uncle Af’s in Agoura Hills, California, ranked #10 on Yelp’s Top 100 Places to Eat in 2024.

Check out the rest of the eateries that made this year’s list and catch up on stories of past winners.

Key business takeaways

• Set yourself apart from other businesses by creating unique and creative offerings. Sometimes, all it takes is a stellar signature item to get your business off the ground.
• Word-of-mouth marketing is the one of the most meaningful kinds. Invest in quality products and customer service, and create opportunities for people to share their experiences online.
• Go the extra mile to make your customers feel like family, and you’ll earn their trust and loyalty in return.

Walking into Uncle Af’s, a sandwich shop in Agoura Hills, California, feels like walking into your grandparents’ home. Sentimental quotes decorate the sunny walls. A father-son duo greets you from behind the counter, offering to walk you through the menu.

Opening the restaurant was a lifelong dream for owner Ben Shams and his father Arshin. After years of working in restaurants and making special sandwich recipes for friends and family, who urged them to make a name for themselves, the pair opened their small brick-and-mortar in 2017.

The shop took off right away. Having worked and lived in the neighborhood for many years, Ben, his father, and his brother, who also helps out at the restaurant, were well-known in the community, and neighbors were quick to support their venture. The name “Uncle Af’s,” an affectionate nickname given to Arshin by Ben’s childhood friends, speaks to the following the family has curated and leveraged from day one.

Their surging success hasn’t let up since. With locals making frequent visits and visitors booking hotels in the neighborhood just to give the sandwiches a taste, Uncle Af’s earned the #10 spot on Yelp’s Top 100 Places to Eat List in 2024, its third Yelp honor to date. The restaurant was also named the #6 brunch restaurant in the U.S. in 2021 and was ranked #6 on the list of 2022 Top Places to Eat in L.A. and the San Fernando Valley.

Follow the stages of Ben’s journey as he turned his passion project into the neighborhood’s favorite restaurant with two key ingredients: care and consistency.

Getting started in a saturated market

With Ben’s previous work as a chef and Arshin’s 20 years of restaurant management experience, the two were prepared to weather the storm that awaited them. Due to its saturation and diversity, the restaurant industry can be an extremely challenging market in which to set yourself apart.

Luckily, Ben found his competitive edge from the start: special sauces. Making 90% of their sauces in house, including their ketchup and ranch, Uncle Af’s flavors are uniquely delicious.

“If you go in to order a club sandwich, which most sandwich shops and restaurants have, the idea is no place is going to have the same club sandwich as ours,” Ben said. “I want customers to come in, try [a sandwich], and think to themselves, ‘I’ve never had one like this before.’”

Ben landed on this focus for the restaurant after realizing that quality sauce, along with quality bread, is the key to a perfect sandwich. He attributes his flavor creations to the restaurant’s exploding success.

Uncle Af’s menu of global flavors—ranging from Middle Eastern to Mediterranean to American—draws in customers with every background and palate imaginable. Ben gives his sandwiches creative names, like the Mona Lisa and the Happy Cow, to keep them memorable. The shop’s most popular sandwich, the Chicken Firecracker, contains a “firecracker aioli” that takes 45 minutes to make, the product of 19 different spices. Other sauce fan favorites are the garlic aioli and the pesto.

New ideas for sandwiches come from Ben and his family’s travels, having friends and family all over the world. With more customers flocking to the restaurant each day, they’ve learned how to capitalize on their superpower, always keeping an eye—and a taste bud—out for the next big flavor.

Mastering the art and science of sandwich-making

In the first few years of business, Ben didn’t do any marketing. All of his growth was organic. Being located in the heart of a small city, word spread fast among neighbors.

He quickly discovered that the key to this organic success was consistency. When you start having “good” and “bad” days, you lose the credibility that brought you to the top.

“When you come in and try my sandwich and you rave about it, and you bring somebody else in, I think it’s important the person you bring in has that same experience you did,” Ben said.

This consistent sandwich portfolio is the result of extensive flavor testing. Ben has spent hours in the kitchen experimenting with different ingredient quantities and combinations, getting every recipe down to a science before he adds it to the menu.

“Let’s say a sandwich is eight items,” he said. “You can give those eight items to five different people, and they can make them five different ways because of the layers you put in place, the amount of sauce. All those little variables make a huge difference with the flavor.”

Thanks to thorough staff training, Ben’s staff knows the exact order ingredients need to go in to produce the target flavor and exactly how thick the bread must be to hold the sandwich together without overpowering the filling. Ben delegates tasks to his head chef Katrina, who is his eyes and ears in the kitchen, trains new hires, and makes sure things run smoothly, so Ben can focus on his customers.

“In the earlier days, I was probably not the most fun person to work with,” Ben admitted. “I would be sending bread back, sending sandwiches back because [they] needed to be a very certain way. But I think that paid off. Once you get the formula down, it really is smooth. It’s kind of, at this point, second nature to [my staff].”

While formulaic, Ben also sees his recipes as a form of art. Part of his mission as a sandwich shop owner is to provide customers with affordable dishes that still have the thoughtful flavor combinations and presentations you would find at an upscale restaurant .

Key to Ben’s masterpieces is a commitment to cooking everything from scratch, from the chicken to the bacon to the 20-ingredient sauces. His kitchen doesn’t even have a microwave. Though this often leads to a line out the door, Ben—and his customers—know his fresh flavors are worth the wait. Uncle Af’s regulars have grown to expect long wait times and have learned to call their orders in ahead of time.

Building a customer community

Perhaps the most important contributor to Ben’s success has been the passion he and his father have radiated from day one. By being behind the counter together every day, greeting and serving customers with a smile, the father and son pair have recreated the dynamic of their family kitchen at the restaurant.

“I don’t call my dad Af. I call him Dad,” Ben said. “My dad doesn’t call me Ben, he calls me Son. That energy in the room [is] one of those things that really makes people feel that sense of community.”

Not only do customers observe this family dynamic, they’re invited into it. Ben’s customer service strategy is to treat everyone that enters the shop like a guest in his home. From the moment a customer walks in the door, Ben makes sure they have a full glass, a full plate, and everything else they need to enjoy their time at Uncle Af’s.

Sometimes, this means going the extra mile with his creations. While Uncle Af’s diverse menu of gluten-free, vegan, and vegetarian options can satisfy most palates, Ben is eager to personalize an order when a customer doesn’t find their perfect match.

Recently, he had a family come in with their picky-eater son asking for a slice of turkey on bread, and he offered to make them a unique, kid-friendly sandwich instead. It was the first time the couple had ever seen their son eat a sandwich without picking it apart.

“Whatever you eat, we’re going to make it work,” Ben said. “If you’re vegan and we don’t have enough vegan options, I’m going to tell you: ‘You know what, let me make you a different type of sandwich and make some things up and keep you entertained.’”

Customers have embraced his whole-hearted attempts to connect. Ben has found that when he welcomes customers into Uncle Af’s with open arms, they consistently meet him with understanding and trust, even on busy days.

“The owner’s presence was the cherry on top,” said Yelp Elite Adam L. in his 5-star review.  “His accommodating service made my first visit feel like a regular’s experience, ensuring every detail was catered to with a personal touch.”

Diners have also come to associate a sense of nostalgia with Uncle Af’s homemade recipes and intimate environment. Kids who were in high school when the shop first opened will make sure Uncle Af’s is one of the first pit stops they make when they come home from college. Even people who have moved out of the neighborhood make an effort to visit Uncle Af’s when they come back to see friends and family.

“People will say, ‘I’m just dreaming about that sandwich.’ That is one of my favorite compliments we get,” Ben said. “We feel missed, and the feeling of being missed is one of the most genuine feelings someone can have.”

Finding new opportunities to grow

Ben is grateful for the surge in organic marketing that has made Uncle Af’s a neighborhood favorite. Hundreds of reviewers have shared their love for the shop on Yelp and many of his customers come in to create TikTok videos and Instagram posts about the restaurant.

Believing the best kind of endorsements come from the heart, Ben doesn’t ask for reviews or even encourage his customers to take photos. Instead, he’s learned it’s more important to focus on the appeal of your products and space, creating opportunities for people to want to share your food and atmosphere with their network.

In response to the media attention Uncle Af’s has been receiving, and the attention he anticipates flowing in from their spot on the Top 100 list, Ben is planning a small remodel, including adding new backgrounds to the walls of his shop to make them more picture and video-worthy for customer Instagram posts and Yelp reviews.

“I want [the art on the walls] to be able to complement the art on the plate,” he said.

With “AF” being a popular online acronym, Ben is also eager to capitalize on the shareability of his business name. He plans to turn “hungry AF,” a phrase customers often bring to his attention, into a hashtag used to launch social media competitions and giveaways.

Another project Ben has in the works is selling his special sauces by the jar. With around nine out of every 10 people that come into the shop asking for a side of sauce, he knows the demand is there and wants to continue positioning his sauces as the hallmark of Uncle Af’s. He hopes to bottle and package the sauces and sell them wholesale by the end of 2024.

Finally, Ben and his family are looking at opportunities to expand the business. With their eyes out for the perfect location, they have high hopes for Uncle Af’s 2.0.

The opportunity to grow is the result of the hard work and creative vision Ben and his family have funneled into the business from day one. From spending hours testing sauce flavors to meticulously training staff to smiling every time someone walks in the store, the Shams’s community legacy has been years in the making.

Ben urges fellow small business owners to operate with this unwavering commitment, especially in the early days.

“Some days or some weeks, even some months, you feel all different types of emotions from happiness to sadness to frustration, laughter, tears. And the best thing you can do is not overwhelm yourself. Just handle the problem in front of you. If you allow yourself to get overwhelmed, the quality of everything will drop tremendously.”

By starting out with a clear vision and niche for your business, and never taking your eyes off the prize, success will follow.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day. There are no shortcuts for success,” Ben added. “But if you put in the work, you stay consistent, and you stay true to yourself and your customers, it will always work out.”