How FB Society Is Growing A few of DFW’s Most Profitable Eating places

Dallas-Fort Value (DFW) is a hub for chain eating places — not solely drawing them in, however creating them. Black-Eyed Pea, Steak and Ale, El Chico, Dickey’s, La Madeline, and Pizza Inn all began right here. So did Velvet Taco. The quirky taco chain, an concept hatched by Randy Dewitt and Jack Gibbons, turned the primary restaurant from FB Society (the hospitality group beforehand referred to as Entrance Burner — it modified the title in 2020 because of confusion with one other group) to grow to be a wildly profitable chain. In the previous few years, it’s unfold prolifically all through the state after which outdoors of Texas after the group bought it to a non-public fairness agency in 2021. It’s the same case with breastaurant chain Twin Peaks. Probably the most profitable tales in hospitality proper now, it’s predicted that it should make one billion {dollars} in income over the following few years. And that’s the entire concept, Gibbons tells Eater Dallas over lunch in the Ranch in Los Colinas one wet day. Do the enjoyable a part of arising with the concepts, nurture the manufacturers, and if it turns into a house run, promote it off to another person to run.

That is an uncommon marketing strategy. For many restaurateurs, Gibbons defined over a plate with a juicy double minimize pork chop with a carnitas rub that the desk shared, the purpose of arising with a profitable concept is to make it a series or a franchise, and get different individuals to run it when you accumulate the cash. Gibbons, who had a 25-year-long profession through which he labored his approach up from being a server at Pappadeaux in Dallas to the very best echelons of Houston’s Pappas Restaurant group, discovered that he’s an “concepts man.” “On the time, I ran out of mentors at Pappas, and so I went again to varsity on the College of Dallas, the place I acquired my MBA. I form of knew I used to be going to finish up working this firm,” Gibbons says, as a result of DeWitt was already courting him for a partnership. “Randy saved speaking to me about what the market appeared like and that there have been extra alternatives to open impartial eating places on this metropolis.”

FB Society

That was circa 2008, when the true property market was crashing, and Dallas suburbs had nothing however chain eating places. As Gibbons describes it, people needed to drive to Uptown to get an fascinating cocktail and meal that wasn’t from Chili’s (an organization additionally created and headquartered in, you guessed it, Dallas). Gibbons and DeWitt, suburban guys with households, wished to construct one thing, a bit selfishly, for themselves. Their first venture was the restaurant Gibbons and I had been sitting in, the Ranch. It’s one of many solely eating places that FB Society hasn’t duplicated and likewise a restaurant that the majority Dallasites haven’t ever eaten at. This can be very designed to be for the ’burbs.

“The evening earlier than we opened the Ranch, Randy goes, ‘What occurs if this isn’t busy?’ And me being the naive person who I are typically, I used to be like, ‘That’s by no means going to occur,’” Gibbons says. “We opened it up, and it was crickets.”

FB Society

Crickets in 2009 became a bustling and busy spot by the point the restaurant celebrated its fifteenth anniversary in 2024. It stays a flagship for the group as a result of its kitchen is the place a lot of new dish concepts nonetheless get examined out. It really works as a result of the Ranch has an expansive menu that covers American, Texan, Southwest, and Mexican dishes. Concepts is perhaps exported to Whiskey Cake, Haywire, Son of a Butcher, Sixty Vines, Mexican Sugar, or, if it’s expansive sufficient, it’d grow to be an idea at one of many meals halls the group owns — along with Legacy Corridor in Plano, FB Society has Meeting Meals Corridor in Nashville and can open a meals corridor in New York Metropolis later this 12 months.

The meals halls are one other kind of incubator inside this enterprise of restaurant incubators. Son of a Butcher was the primary profitable export from a meals corridor with an important backstory. “We had John Tesar, who was the authentic chef within the meals corridor [with Knife Burger]. I recruited him, considering there wasn’t a greater man to run a burger stand,” Gibbons says. “I didn’t work with him day-to-day, however the meals corridor individuals did. After a time, his gross sales declined, he didn’t spend time on the market, and the standard diminished. They ended up asking him to depart,” and an unsurprising battle adopted, he says. Needing one thing to take its place, the meals corridor requested Gibbons to give you one other concept for the stall. Gibbons says he felt tired of burgers however was enchanted by the concept of sliders within the White Fortress type. “The title, SOB, form of got here from John Tesar. When you concentrate on how the meals corridor considered him, you realize — I like him, he’s an fascinating man to have a beer with.” He’s additionally, clearly, an inspiration.

FB Society

The black eye that’s additionally a serious success within the firm’s historical past is Twin Peaks. Gibbons doesn’t push apart questions on it when requested, however makes it clear that there have been 4 or 5 eating places earlier than he joined forces with DeWitt, and that they’re firmly not concerned with it now. “The previous couple of years that we owned it, we didn’t work on it,” he says. “We had an impartial crew in a unique workplace that was working the model.” When the chance got here to promote it to FAT Manufacturers in 2021, Gibbons stated all of them agreed it was a “hell yeah.” He calls it a “transaction,” however doesn’t handle the problematic nature of working a restaurant chain that commodifies the our bodies of ladies. As this text went to press, Eater Dallas obtained a press launch from a consultant of Twin Peaks touting its current successes, detailing the opening of 9 new eating places in 2024, singing franchise agreements for twenty-four new areas, a C-Suite Leaders Award to CEO Joe Hummel from the Dallas Enterprise Journal, internet hosting a golf match that raised $530,000 for the veteran-focused Tunnel to Towers Basis, that it held a contest to call Miss Twin Peaks 2024, and assembled provides to contribute to a Dallas-based home violence shelter.

Whereas there are meals overlaps at FB Society’s varied eating places — every is actually the same type of meals, and all of them are pretty enormous areas — the “idea” behind every is distinct. Take, for instance, Whiskey Cake. With areas within the suburbs surrounding Dallas, Austin, Houston, and really inside Fort Value and Oklahoma Metropolis, it was the second restaurant the duo created, filled with heat woods and masculine power. In truth, it’s an terrible lot just like the Ranch, minus any Western components, save for its concentrate on sustainability. Whereas the Ranch was created with the concept the “Dallas” Wild West power vacationers may discover in Fort Value wasn’t out there at a location near-ish the airport, Whiskey Cake was created for the suburbs. Gibbons says they “let a craft cocktail man design the bar,” and he wished no soda weapons — solely contemporary components, glorious ice, and the proper glasses. “Doing this out in Plano, individuals’s heads had been blown off,” Gibbons says. It could sound rudimentary, however when have you ever ever had a drink served to you in a thinly rimmed glass at TGI Fridays (one other chain that didn’t begin in Dallas however positive moved its headquarters right here)?

FB Society

FB Society

“Once you transfer the clock ahead to right now, what we had been doing [in 2010] is nearly achieved by each restaurant right now,” Gibbons says. One thing else Whiskey Cake was forward on was implementing sustainable measures, a few of that are nonetheless not normal over a decade later, like having photo voltaic panels, repurposed furnishings, and gutters that run again into the landscaping the place vegetation aren’t only for ornament but additionally used as components within the cocktails. Gibbons says that once they took over the unique restaurant area, they took all of the silverware to a welder, who used the forks to create an enormous fork-shaped sculpture. Ultimately, it turned one of many first eating places in DFW to put in electrical automobile chargers. “Plano doesn’t have, and didn’t on the time time, recycling companies for eating places, so there have been boundaries to getting the place we wished to go,” he says.

Parts of this return to the Ranch, the place the employees reuses wine bottles as water bottles, and at Whiskey Cake, the place they do the identical and likewise model wine containers with the restaurant emblem to make use of as coasters. Toying with the concept of repurposing issues led to Sixty Vines, the place wines are kegged — however getting there with vineyards took a while. “We’d go to Aspen Meals and Wine to speak to the winemakers, and so they’re like, ‘We don’t need to keg. We don’t need to do screwoff corks.’ It was exhausting.” Sixty Vines may have simply appeared similar to the Ranch and Whiskey Cake, however the design and culinary groups pushed them in one other route. Gibbons says they initially wished to implement barrels and heavy wooden with rusty metal within the decor, however the groups instructed restraint, pushing them in a recent route the place shiny, skinny metal kegs, subway tiles, and easy strains would enable the wines to be the focal point. That carried via to the menus, the place dishes are easy sufficient to let the components be the star. At Whiskey Cake, that may appear to be making goat cheese fondue with domestically sourced goat cheese, ordering an enormous 24-ounce bone-in ribeye that got here from close by 44 Farms, or getting a bowl of Farmer’s Market Soup that makes use of all of the leftover domestically sourced produce as an alternative of tossing it out.

FB Society

Flash ahead to right now, and Sixty Vines has maybe the most important enlargement inside FB Society, with areas in Texas in DFW, Houston, and Austin areas, and different states together with Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.

Gibbons says numerous FB Society’s technique relating to eating places mannequin these of the true property business: “When one thing works, does it should develop?” Gibbons asks. “The place does the second and third location go?” It’s a course of he says they’ve refined all through the years. “In some [restaurants], there have been large gaps of lack of progress and in others they’ve gone shortly.”

Certainly one of its slower growers is Ida Clare, the favored Southern meals spot in Addison that was once a Truluck’s (it has a second location in San Antonio). Tucked away off the tollway, it has a “if you realize, you realize” really feel. It’s the form of place the place you’ll be able to order fried hen and macaroni, the dinner menu is named “supper,” and the bartenders have vinyl hours the place they play strictly data of their alternative. The eating room appears like a nicer model of the Black-Eyed Pea — communal, busy, and hallmarked by the smells of house cooking — with a menu to rival any native restaurant but the meals nonetheless feels accessible and straightforward for any Texan. Gibbons acquired extra concerned within the restaurant a couple of years in the past and, together with the management crew, began refining the menu to characteristic extra contemporary greens to be in step with what restaurant tradition is doing extra broadly. Dishes like that glorious fried hen and Gulf shrimp and grits ship diners again to childhood, whereas the appetizer sampler served on a lazy Susan provides some whimsy to the meal. A lot of the seafood is from the Gulf, with a couple of Atlantic objects, and all of the menu objects are up to date now to replicate components which are in season.

FB Society

FB Society

“After I stroll into [Ida’s], the completely different employees members really feel like they had been curated for the model. They simply match with coloured hair, piercings, tattoos — individuals who have an impartial, maverick streak are simply who work there,” Gibbons says. Nevertheless it’s not one thing you’ll be able to really curate — extra of a, “for those who construct it, they’ll come” situation. Ida’s has grow to be the FB Society restaurant that skews youthful and has the strongest persona, Gibbons says.

Haywire is one other restaurant that spawned from the DNA of the Ranch. Gibbons animatedly rants about how, whereas constructing the Ranch, he and his companions studied different eating places to see who was the “native” restaurant targeted on sourcing native meals and creating “an actual Texan menu.” “From a meals standpoint, it’s superb how all these ‘Texas’ eating places will open up, however they’ve salmon and lobster on their menu,” he says with fun. “Good day! The particular person making these [menus] is a few movie star chef from Las Vegas, and people will not be objects that come from Texas.” At Haywire, the menu tells you precisely the place in Texas the meals got here from and which native ranchers and farmers the restaurant partnered with. Every part from the cheese (Dublin) to the slicing boards (Allen) is accounted for. Order a petite filet from Damaged Arrow Ranch in Ingram; a plate of mini elk tacos with tortillas made at La Mexicana Tortilla Manufacturing facility in Duncanville; or a dessert with ice cream from Henry’s in Plano.

The thought bloomed to create a contemporary Texas restaurant that wasn’t disingenuous. In got here Haywire. The place the Ranch leans into that Western feeling, Haywire has what Gibbons calls “a Marfa vibe.” Smooth and complicated with out sacrificing the signifiers of Texas, there’s wooden, the Texas flag, and fireplace pits — simply with all of the tough edges sanded down. “It doesn’t really feel like a restaurant that belongs in Plano, however they deserve it. They assist it,” Gibbons says.

FB Society

FB Society

The restaurant got here into view when an organization creating the Legacy West procuring heart approached FB Society wanting “one thing cool” within the space for its 2017 opening. The unique Haywire tacked on to Legacy Corridor, the meals corridor that anchors the upscale procuring advanced, that includes a first-floor meals corridor, a bar on the second and third flooring, and an out of doors field backyard that doubles as a stay music venue. Its inspiration got here from Chelsea Market in New York Metropolis, the place cool distributors provide a plethora of cuisines. Not like most procuring complexes, an enormous division retailer isn’t the anchor — the meals corridor is. “It’s the primary time within the nation one thing like that has been achieved in that approach, in a model new growth,” Gibbons says. Whereas the meals corridor enterprise has been extra of a sluggish burn for FB Society, Haywire has been prolific in Texas, with areas in Dallas’s Uptown neighborhood, San Antonio, a current opening in Houston, and a brand new outpost headed for Austin.

Additionally on model: “None of them are cookie cutter,” Gibbons says. Nestled within the tiny however busy Memorial neighborhood west of the town, the Houston location options floor-to-ceiling glass partitions and a glassed-in get together barn, whereas its San Antonio outpost, situated within the high-end La Cantera out of doors mall, is blanketed with woven Western tapestries and a ceiling mural that depicts the cattle path.“That’s the imaginative and prescient of this model. Whereas there are frequent model components, I need all of them to really feel completely different, distinctive, not the identical.”

And such a purpose requires the restaurant group to suppose outdoors the field. As an alternative of opening eating places within the metropolis and exporting them out, as most operators do, FB Society is understood to launch within the suburbs, specifically Plano, earlier than following up with second areas in Dallas. “It’s as a result of we’re not going after a crowd that may solely afford to eat there for an important day. Our enterprise mannequin is to create a particular surroundings, a particular meals expertise, and provides good worth,” he says. “I’m in it for the lengthy haul.”