After taking over the family’s restaurant business in 2017, Ryan Bridgeman downsized and diversified the company’s portfolio. Louisville, Kentucky-based Manna Inc. operates about 160 Wendy’s, 62 Fazoli’s and 10 Golden Corral restaurants.
Ryan Bridgeman said running a $450 million restaurant company with about 800 employees is a lot like being in a relay race.
“You’re constantly passing things off to the next guy and those handoffs are going to determine your success,” he said.
It makes perfect sense for Bridgeman, the CEO of Manna Inc., to use a sports analogy to describe his restaurant business of 230-plus Wendy’s, Fazoli’s and Golden Corral locations. He was a track and field star in college, and his father is former NBA great Ulysses Lee “Junior” Bridgeman, who began building the family’s restaurant empire after retiring from professional sports.
Since taking over the business in 2017, Junior Bridgeman’s middle child has crafted his own franchise legacy, first by downsizing and then diversifying the company’s portfolio. Louisville, Kentucky-based Manna Inc. operates about 160 Wendy’s, 62 Fazoli’s and 10 Golden Corrals.
Those unit counts are well below the 450-plus Wendy’s and Chili’s units the company owned when the elder Bridgeman was CEO of Bridgeman Foods. But as his son pointed out, many of his Wendy’s locations are surpassing the average unit volume of just under $2 million, while his Golden Corrals also posted strong sales in 2024.
The decision to exit Chili’s came prior to the COVID-19 pandemic as Bridgeman assessed the portfolio and determined it was time to downsize. Chili’s owner Brinker International bought back the group’s 116 units in 2019.
There was a need, Bridgeman said, “to right-size operations and focus on more manageable growth.”
“My sister, Eden, who was the CMO at the time, and I looked at the entire business after we took over and said it makes sense to scale back some,” he said. “Everything is more manageable now and there’s still plenty of room for us to grow with the brands we’re with.” He indicated he’s shopping for a chicken concept to add to the portfolio.
Junior Bridgeman, meanwhile, said he is “very proud of Ryan and all that he has accomplished since taking over the restaurant business. It has continued to thrive and, most importantly, the culture and people continue to flourish.”
Passing the baton
It’s not easy growing up in the shadow of a famous parent, especially one who built a multi-million-dollar business as a franchisee after achieving star status as a professional athlete.
Ryan Bridgeman, a 42-year-old Louisville native and father of two, faced inevitable comparisons to his father, who was featured in an ESPN article last year titled, “How an NBA sixth man built a $600M empire.” Junior Bridgeman, now a Coca-Cola bottling distributor and the owner of Ebony and Jet magazines, made more news in 2024 when he bought a 10 percent minority stake in the Milwaukee Bucks, the team he played with for 10 of his 12 NBA seasons, from 1975 to 1984 and 1986 to 1987.
The 711 games he played with the Bucks ranks Bridgeman third in franchise history, behind only Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton. His No. 2 jersey hangs from the rafters of Fiserv Forum alongside those of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Oscar Robertson and other legends.
To his credit, Ryan Bridgeman does not run away from his father’s legacy. Instead, he embraces it and uses it as motivation to run the family’s and his own businesses. Along with being CEO of Manna Inc., he’s a managing member and president of RD Services, a company that provides customer and employee service solutions to restaurant and concession businesses, and of Bridgeman Hospitality, which specializes in contract foodservice through its partnership with Aramark.
He described his leadership style and his company’s structure as an inverted pyramid, with customers and team members at the top and he and his executive staff at the bottom in more of a supportive role.
Again, he used a sports analogy to explain the keys to being a successful multi-unit franchisee.
“I ran track in college and the analogy I and my father used when he was in charge is that running a restaurant business is a team effort and you have to trust the people you work with and provide them the support they need,” Bridgeman said. “That’s what I try to do every day.”