Chris McMillan is perhaps the first restaurant operator to say evaluating a concept’s existing operations isn’t essential when deciding to add a brand to his portfolio. That’s how confident he is in his own team.
“We don’t ever really look much at the operations,” said McMillan, founder and CEO of Panhandle Restaurant Group and a new franchisee of Big Chicken and Teriyaki Madness after signing large multi-unit deals. “The product, it has to be something that we’re proud of and know people would eat on a consistent basis—and that we would eat ourselves.”
He’ll visit the restaurants of a prospective new concept in the course of due diligence, but how those locations run “is not a deciding factor,” as he believes the experience of his operations team—and his own 20-plus years in the Sonic Drive-In system—mean they can execute any concept.
Panhandle Restaurant Group, based in Panama City, Florida, is a Sonic franchisee with 27 restaurants in northern Florida, northwest Arkansas and Louisiana. It also has two RibCrib restaurants with an agreement for another four, is soon opening the first of three PJ’s Coffee locations and is developing three of its own brands—seafood concept C-Mac’s, 850 Pizza and Gulf Coast Tacos—with plans to franchise. Big Chicken, the Shaquille O’Neal-owned fast-casual concept, and Denver-based Teriyaki Madness are the newest additions to the portfolio after McMillan signed 40- and 35-unit franchise agreements, respectively.
Amy and Chris McMillan are Sonic franchisees who formed Panhandle Restaurant Group and are quickly adding concepts to the portfolio.
That’s a lot of development to digest, but McMillan’s philosophy is, “you’ve gotta be 1,000 percent in or not at all.” His agreements for Big Chicken and Teriyaki Madness cover territories similar to where Panhandle operates its Sonics. McMillan doesn’t have private equity backing but works with firms such as Four Rivers Capital, Plaza Street Partners and Peachtree Development on a build-to-suit basis.
McMillan and his wife, Amy, who’s also his business partner, both trace their restaurant roots to Sonic, where they started working as teenagers. That background, he said, helps them relate to store-level employees.
“I started as a carhop, a base employee probably making six dollars an hour,” he said. “We connect very well to our people. We’re preaching and teaching what we’ve been walking,” and they make a point to demonstrate the opportunities available for employees to move up in the organization.
Expanding the PRG portfolio
A former Slim Chickens franchisee, McMillan sold to partners his stake in the three restaurants the group opened, paving the way for him to sign with Big Chicken. That brand has two restaurants open, in Las Vegas and Glendale, California, along with non-traditional locations inside Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, UBS Arena in New York and Moody Center in Austin, Texas. It also has two spots on Carnival cruise ships and a deal with Ghost Kitchen Brands, which so far has one location inside a Walmart in Rochester, New York.
The cost to open a Big Chicken ranges from $653,000 to $1,567,000.
“Minus the fact that the food is elite, the team involved, there was such a connection … it was almost like we’d known them our entire lives,” said McMillan of what helped seal the deal. And it was while in Las Vegas for Big Chicken’s discovery day that McMillan and his team had the chance to stop by a Teriyaki Madness location after doing some initial online research.
“We went in and said, we want one of everything on the menu, and stuffed our faces until we could hardly move,” recalled McMillan. He and Amy, who he said is “really skeptical to say yes to anything,” made a separate visit and she also loved the food.
“It all boiled down to the quality of the product.”
Teriyaki Madness, a fast-casual concept serving rice and noodle bowls, positions itself as a healthier option and, McMillan said, appeals to a different consumer set than PRG’s other brands. Teriyaki Madness has nearly 120 locations; its 35-unit agreement with PRG is the largest in the brand’s 19-year history.
The cost to open a Teriyaki Madness is between $346,400 and $768,760; its average unit volume is $1.16 million.