Adam, right, and younger brother Matt Saxton share CEO duties for The Saxton Group, one of McAlister’s Deli largest franchisees.
Adam Saxton was in high school when McAlister’s Deli first opened in his hometown of Madison, Mississippi. He and his family, which owned several pizza restaurants at the time, became instant fans of what at the time was a new brand offering sandwiches, salads, giant stuffed spuds and its own take on sweet tea.
“I remember going there in the mid-1990s with my family, before fast casual even became a thing in the restaurant business, and telling my dad, ‘Why don’t we think about opening our own McAlister’s,” Saxton recalled. “And here we are, this many years later, and we’re still buying McAlister’s.”
With 73 locations open today and another set to open November 17 in Terrell, Texas, The Saxton Group is one of the largest McAlister’s Deli franchisees and is among the biggest restaurant operators in the country. The company sits at No. 84 on the Franchise Times Restaurant 200, with $197 million in sales in 2022. As a brand, McAlister’s, which is part of Focus Brands, has more than 520 locations and systemwide sales of $955.8 million.
Adam and younger brother Matt Saxton share CEO duties while their father, Kelly Saxton, is executive chairman. Based in Dallas, most of their units are in Texas and Oklahoma, but in recent years, the company has also inked development deals in smaller markets in Nebraska, Iowa and Kansas City. It sold 14 Midwest locations to another McAlister’s franchisee two years ago in order to focus on core markets.
Kelly Saxton started the family business in 1982 as a multi-unit franchisee with Mazzio’s Pizza, which later rebranded as Mazzio’s Italian Eatery. The Saxton Group, which sold off its last Mazzio’s in 2004, opened its first McAlister’s in 1999 in East Texas, Adam Saxton said. The company in 2021 expanded its portfolio with the signing of a 10-unit development agreement to bring Jaggers, the fast-casual concept from Texas Roadhouse, to Texas and Oklahoma.
“That exciting journey officially kicks off November 8 in Longview, Texas, when we open our first Jaggers unit,” Saxton said.
The multi-generational family business with 3,000-plus employees has been in growth mode since its founding, consistently adding five to six new McAlister’s locations every year for more than two decades now. That steady approach helped the group this year surpass $2 billion in total sales since 1999, Saxton said.
“Even during the worst years—COVID, recessions—we built roughly the same number of restaurants every year, and I see no reason why we won’t continue with that path in the future given our current results,” he said.
Adam Saxton is owner and co-CEO of The Saxton Group
“I think one of the things that has made us so successful, and at the same time unique in terms of multi-unit franchisees of our size, is that we’ve grown our size almost exclusively through organic unit development,” Saxton continued. “We build restaurants, so we don’t do a lot of acquisitions. We don’t go to markets that are not contiguous to where we operate. We stay true to our core focus on the brand and on the geography where we operate in, and we expand out from there.”
Saxton attributed much of his group’s success to execution of the McAlister’s concept, which he said generates steady traffic throughout the day. Dine-in orders make up 35 percent of sales at his restaurants, while in-person to-go orders account for 12 percent. Digital channels such as the McAlister’s app and online ordering drive 20 percent of sales, with third-party delivery and catering making up 17 percent and 10 percent, respectively.
Store traffic for Saxton’s portfolio of McAlister’s restaurants is nearly double that of systemwide averages, he said.
“What makes us successful? I would say being really careful about choosing our locations and not giving into the temptation of going into markets that necessarily look good on paper because their population is growing,” he said. “Residential population is only one piece of the equation for us and what we’ve found is that McAlister’s really performs best in places where residential population, retail traffic and daytime population office workers really intersect.”
Culture, too, plays an important role, and Saxton said his company wins by putting people first—and making its priorities visible. Every employee gets a laminated business-sized “Culture Card” that outlines the organization’s vision, mission and values, with a special emphasis on contributing to the communities where it operates.
Additionally, the company promotes employee growth and development with a career mapping and tuition reimbursement program.
In addition to careful brand selection, he had this advice to share with other franchisees considering multi-unit expansion: “Understand your role. And what I mean by that is understand exactly what you signed up for: to operate and develop someone else’s brand to the very best of your ability,” he said. “My second piece of advice is carefully choosing your first location because you never get to redo your first location. The first couple of locations are super, super critical. Eliminate every risk factor you can think of.”