As a dedicated nonconformist, Texas Roadhouse founder and longtime leader Kent Taylor wasn’t a big one for rules—unless they were the contrarian ones he set. When the pandemic hit and delivery proved the salvation of many a casual-dining restaurant, the native Kentuckian refused to let Roadhouse join the pack. Instead, he urged competitors to play lemming and join the hordes of concepts that, at least in his view, were risking cold food sent at the wrong time to customers who’d be put off by the look of mishandled food.
That may be one of the better-known instances of Taylor refusing to lead by following. His autobiography, “Made from Scratch,” abounds in other instances of the late entrepreneur blazing his own way to success.
Here’s a sampling.
Chasing Garth Brooks and Larry Bird
In the early days of Roadhouse, Taylor faced the usual entrepreneurial challenge of finding enough capital to fuel his venture. John Y. Brown, the one-time Kentucky governor and early leader of KFC, had been one of his supporters. Taylor wanted to find another prominent and well-off individual who could provide a continual stream of financing.
A hardcore music fan, Taylor had the brainstorm of reaching out to Garth Brooks, then at the height of his stardom. The restaurateur went to Nashville in hopes of connecting but was unable to secure an appointment. He then reached out incessantly in other ways—until Brooks’ office emphatically told him to buzz off. The country-music star wasn’t interested.
Afterward, Taylor found himself on a flight with basketball legend Larry Bird. The former Celtic was sitting in first class, while Taylor was back in coach. He tried to personally present Bird with a copy of the Roadhouse business plan but was stopped by an unmovable flight attendant. Taylor then asked her to present the business plan. She agreed but then failed to do so.
Taylor figured he’d lost his shot until he spied Bird heading to a cab after deplaning. Taylor ran after the star—only to hear him tell the cab driver to step on it because he was being chased by some lunatic.
Party down, folks
When Taylor was still running restaurants firsthand, he had a technique for motivating his staff to provide an experience. He’d urge them to imagine that the crew was hosting a house party in their homes that night. What would each of them do in those circumstances to make the party a success? Those functions were then allocated to the staff with an explanation that they were delivering a party that night for guests.
A Milli Vanilli move
One of the issues Taylor confronted early in the development of Texas Roadhouse was the lack of a single roadhouse in Texas. His team worried that customers would abandon the brand because of suspected inauthenticity if they found out. To lessen the chances, Taylor rented a post office box in Texas and used that location as the mail-in address printed on guest comment cards.
“It wasn’t Milli Vanilli-level deception, but it had a certain charm,” Taylor wrote in his book.
3 tables per server
Taylor envisioned Roadhouse as a concept that would deliver the food quality of an Outback Steakhouse at a price similar to a Chili’s or an Applebee’s. But he also wanted it to deliver an experience. He experimented with live music, a reflection of his experience in running nightclubs. But the fledgling brand found that table turns were slowed to a painstaking level, greatly impacting sales.
Instead, he focused on service. To ensure some pampering, he assigned servers no more than three tables per station—a challenge of the prevailing convention of having a single waitstaffer handle five or six tables.
Peanut pains
Taylor clearly managed to charm his way out of a slew of difficult situations. A case in point: One of the early Roadhouses opened before its bathrooms were finished. Taylor convinced a neighboring store to give customers access to the retail facility’s bathrooms.
All seemed to be going well until Taylor fielded a phone call from the store’s manager, who was clearly irate. He griped that Roadhouse customers were leaving a trail of peanut shells from the store’s entrance to its bathrooms. He wanted Taylor to pay for the clean-up.
Taylor countered that he was actually doing the retailer a favor. No one had to direct customers of either enterprise to the bathroom, since they merely had to follow a trail of shells. And Taylor speculated that departments along the peanut-husk trail were likely enjoying an upswing in sales because of the additional traffic from Roadhouse patrons.
Sure enough, the store’s manager found that to be the case. He stopped complaining, and the restaurant’s bathrooms eventually opened.
Activate the crazies
When a new operational challenge would arise for Roadhouse, Taylor had a standard process for hammering out a solution. He would turn to those he called his crazies, the members of the system who were even more oblivious to limits and convention than he was. They would brainstorm a workaround.