Executive Chat, Brandon Coleman, Cotton Patch Cafe CEO

Executive Chat with Rebecca Patt

Featuring Brandon Coleman, CEO of Cotton Patch Cafe

Brandon Coleman became the new CEO of Cotton Patch Cafe, a beloved Texas-based concept known for its hearty Southern cuisine and warm hospitality, in February 2024. Brandon brings a wealth of experience and a dynamic vision and strategy to his new role.

What is your long-term vision for Cotton Patch Café, and how do you plan to differentiate the brand in the highly competitive casual dining space?

Our long-term vision for Cotton Patch Café is to be the largest provider of comfort food in Texas.

We are going to achieve that vision by 2030. We have 45 restaurants today in Texas, and we have 48 total. Our nearest competitor is Cracker Barrel with over 60 locations in the state of Texas. We will be ahead of them before 2030; that's our goal.

We're achieving that through a strategy of focusing on a balanced stakeholder model: our guests, our team, and our shareholders, and really putting each on an equal footing to decide what initiatives we put into play to drive the brand.

To prioritize, we think about team and guests first, then field leadership, then the support center, and finally the C-suite. So, the C-suite is last on the totem pole when it comes to the “traditional leadership” of the company. We're focusing on what makes us great, which is bringing value, exceptional hospitality, and quality scratch cooking altogether and delivering that to the guests at an affordable price point.

How does Cotton Patch Café stay current with food industry trends and customer preferences? Can you share any upcoming innovations or menu changes?

Right now, our focus is on simplifying and condensing the menu. Over time, our menu has grown and expanded into different categories, but right now we do so much from scratch that we really want to focus on what we know we can win with every time.

As far as innovation goes, our guests are looking more for those comfort classics. What innovation looks like to us is how we have more quality and a more affordable price, and how do we take those classics and make them even better. We're not looking for the next Doritos taco. We're looking for simple comfort classics inspired by Texas.

What leadership principles do you prioritize to cultivate a positive company culture? How do you ensure these principles are reflected throughout the organization?

I’ll bring that question into a couple different parts: the first part is more strategic principles, and the second part is values. When I look at what type of strategic principles we put in place, it's first creating a balanced stakeholder model, which I shared with you. It's an ecosystem that we must make sure is always in balance, and that we are finding ways to say yes to all those groups.

Another important strategic philosophy is the guest-value equation: what the guest is getting divided by what they're giving up. So, if you look at what they're getting, they're getting quality, quantity, and experience. What they're giving up is cost and time. You could even argue that they have their opportunity costs as well: what else could they have had instead of this experience?

If what they're getting is greater than what they're giving up, we're winning guests. When it's equal, I think we are delivering exactly what they expected, and therefore, we are vulnerable to competitive intrusion. When we're not giving the guests as much as we're asking from them, then we're losing guests actively, and people are actively seeking other solutions or other restaurants.

What we saw during COVID was a lot of price increases taken across the entire industry because we thought we had permission from the guests, and now what we're seeing is that the entire industry is suffering by not providing a strong value equation. So, when we think about that principal at Cotton Patch, we're really making sure we're giving the guests more than we're taking. We're finding new ways to create lower priced items and new ways to give the guests more for what they're currently paying today.

We're offering a different size portion. Some of our older clienteles maybe don’t want as large of a portion. They want to pay less and get less, and that's the right value equation for them. That's something that we're implementing on that strategic pillar.

As far as values are concerned, I believe strongly in feedback, treating everyone as an equal, and making sure that we're open, direct, and honest with feedback. I believe very much in putting others first in leadership. When the team members feel valued and feel like they're being put first, then they'll put the guest first. That creates an excellent experience, which really drives the value of casual dining.

And then I think another principle that I live by is to really focus on how do we develop the next rounds of leadership in our organization? How do we lift people up? How do we give them more than just a salary, give them more than just a bonus, but give them a true career path and development so that if they want to reach higher, they can continue to grow and reach their goals for themselves? I think that's one of the greatest things about the restaurant industry is the ability to grow upward and to grow quickly.

What do you think are the biggest challenges facing Cotton Patch Cafés today and how are you addressing them to ensure continued growth and success?

I think what we're facing is no different than what casual dining is facing. I think casual dining has kind of lost a step in its experiential side, and that's where we see struggle with the industry or the category.

What Cotton Patch is doing to combat that is really going all in on community engagement, making sure we're engaged and that there's more of a local feel to this concept. We think more about the local town first, our Texas heritage second, and then very last our ability or our breadth as a chain. So, we're not going for how we make it the same everywhere, but how do we make it right in this location. We're looking at localization from team jerseys, supporting local causes, making sure that we're hiring locally, and that we are investing in local communities. I think that's one of the ways that we differentiate is to truly be local and have great service.

And when we think about the service at Cotton Patch, it's familiar. It's personable. I hate to use the overused example of Cheers, but we want to know your name. We want you to have a server that you ask for when you come in, and that's important to us.

I think scratch cooking is another way that we win again and again because truly a vast majority of our items are from scratch. We really lean heavily on that, whether it's the chicken-fried steak, chicken-fried chicken, or our chicken and dumplings. We do things that are very intensive that many restaurants have given up on.

The third piece is affordability. We have exceptional value. We want to make sure that also you can come every day of the week if you're on a fixed income or if you're in between paychecks. We are developing our soup and salad combo at $8.99 and just rolling out our Texas Value Meals at $9.99. There are places you can’t even get a big Mac for that. We're doing a regional campaign with a big push that's shown about a 10% lift in traffic from our initial testing, which is incredible.

Sounds like you’re off to a running start in your first six months at Cotton Patch. You've worked for iconic national brands: Macaroni Grill, Del Frisco's, Fridays. What lessons would you say that you've learned working for these major brands that you translate to your current role and strategy?

I would say that number one, it's all about people. No matter how big the brand is, no matter what it serves or its service style. I think at the end of the day, we see quite clearly, it's all about people in the restaurant business. You put a great manager in and the business changes, the quality of the guest experience changes, the sales traffic, they all come with it.

I think what I also brought to Cotton Patch Cafe is really a focus on data and testing. We're really diving deep into understanding the guests and testing new ways to go to market. That's led us to this 10% lift and traffic that we've seen in tests that we're now rolling out system-wide this week. We're really excited about the potential that comes from focusing on the data and then testing into the right answer.

I think the final thing is, I've spent a lot of time in marketing, and I always prided myself on really understanding operations and being a real partner with operations, instead of just throwing out whatever marketing message I thought was going to be the most successful. Now that I'm in the CEO role, it's really allowed me to put that knowledge of operations combined with the knowledge of the guests and really start to drive the business in the right direction, so that we're making a solid promise to the guests in the marketing communications and delivering on that promise in operations.

One thing that has been incredible with working for a smaller concept after working for some large brands is to get to know the people. If the people drive the business, and I believe they do, then getting to know all of them in a smaller concept like Cotton Patch Café has just been incredible. We've seen the results really hockey stick in the first six months, which is also incredible to see such a quick turn in the metrics as well.

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