George Tinsley Sr., a franchisee since 1984, has built a portfolio full of restaurant brands with units at several airports.
For nearly three decades, George Tinsley Sr. has served customers on the fly. Literally.
Since opening a TGI Fridays in the Tampa International Airport, Tinsley has built a multi-brand portfolio across multiple airports in Florida and Kentucky. Through his Tinsley Family Concessions, he operates 45 restaurants across brands such as KFC, Burger King, Pizza Hut and Chili’s.
His path to franchising goes back to his Kentucky roots, where he grew up and worked alongside Colonel Harland Sanders at KFC. His career there followed one in basketball, which he played professionally for several years.
Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, Tinsley played basketball at Kentucky Wesleyan College, where he won three national championships at the Division II level. He then headed to the American Basketball Association, a league that would later merge with the NBA.
After playing professionally from 1969-1972, moving from team to team, he stepped away from basketball to settle down with his wife. He taught and coached, then decided to look for a profession with a larger salary as he was starting a family.
Tinsley took a job at KFC in the mid-‘70s in the brand’s training department, where he learned all about the concept through classroom work and visiting different restaurants. Eventually, he taught others at a training school opened within the brand’s Louisville headquarters.
“I was added to the training department and worked with the Colonel himself,” Tinsley said. “He would come in a couple times a week to participate in the class as part of the basic management course.”
Tinsley was in the role for three years before becoming an area supervisor in Atlanta, overseeing seven restaurants. He continued to climb the corporate ladder until he became a regional director of human resources at KFC. As he gained more experience, he became interested in the franchising side of the business.
“I was working with franchisees and I fell in love with the model,” Tinsley said. “It was something that stayed in the back of my mind, but I knew I didn’t have the capital at first.”
That opportunity arrived in 1984, when a regional vice president he trained helped him get started with a location in Florida. Operations at his franchise were successful, and over the next decade, it set the entrepreneur up to become a large multi-unit, multi-brand franchisee.
In 1995, another business connection clued Tinsley in on an opening at the Tampa airport for a quick-service restaurant. Tinsley made a bid for the space with KFC, but wasn’t selected. He noticed, however, there was another open space in the airport that could house a causal dining restaurant.
Tinsley partnered with TGI Fridays for the spot and opened a unit, which became the No. 1 restaurant in the system for nine years in a row. Tinsley built on that accomplishment by going into other airports including the Miami International Airport and the Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport.
While he’s moved completely to airport locations and sold his other traditional units, Tinsley said the operations have stayed nearly the same.
“It’s about taking that mentality, and what it takes to operate, into the airport,” Tinsley said. “We go with an aggressive approach to our customers in growing our business. In airports, it’s about attracting two types of customers: The frequent flyers that come Monday through Friday, and your casual travelers who you might see once and never again.”
He said being an airport franchisee requires staying nimble as contracts tend to be shorter and regular remodels can cause unit numbers to fluctuate. Additionally, as non-traditional units, the menus are often condensed versus a typical streetside location.
But the effort is worth it, Tinsley said, not only because of the potential for triumph as a franchisee, but the travelers he gets to meet along the way.
“I’ve loved it from the time we opened our first restaurant,” Tinsley said. “It’s exciting to meet new people, tell our story and get involved in the airports and communities we’re in.”
George’s Trifecta: Worked with Colonel Sanders // College basketball national champ // Golden State Warriors and Orlando Magic fan