WILLY WONKA KEVIN HOCHMAN, MIDDLE, BETWEEN OOMPA LOOMPAS GEORGE FELIX (LEFT) AND DAN FULLER. | PHOTO COURTESY OF BRINKER INTL.
employees as Colonel Sanders. “David Novak taught me about the importance of bringing people along, and the importance of great communication and leadership and envisioning and encouraging people and then making them feel recognized for a great job,” Hochman said. Hochman is quick to recognize people for their role in his career. Creed, who succeeded Novak as Yum CEO, for teaching him about branding. Bracey taught him about “commercial aggressiveness.” And then there is his executive mentor, Dave Goebel, the former CEO of Applebee’s. “He taught me how to be a CEO,” Hochman said. “I’d never been a public company CEO. I knew a lot about marketing. I knew a little bit about operations. I didn’t know how to do all this other stuff.” In August 2022, three months after he was recruited to be the Brinker CEO, Hochman stood before 1,200 Chili’s general managers at the company’s annual conference and made a bold proclamation. Hochman posted a mock cover of Inc. Magazine, dated August 2025. It featured a Chili’s storefront and this cover line: “Chili’s is back baby! How Chili’s restaurant teams led
the charge to return it to winning.” “This cover has not been written yet,” Hochman told them. “It will be written a few years from now and it will tell the story of how you, our restaurant leaders, drove the ideas and the execution that made working at a Chili’s easier, more fun and more rewarding. And returned our brand to greatness.” In hindsight, the proclamation was conservative. But it’s difficult to fully appreciate how bold it was at the time. Chili’s had closed more locations than it opened every year but one since 2009. Average unit volumes grew in 2021, to $2.9 million, and the company was seemingly recovering from the pandemic, but it was still lower than it was in 2008. Had Chili’s simply kept pace with inflation, it’d be $4.5 million, nearly 60% higher. And it was doing better than most of its casual-dining compatriots. Two of the four big bar-and-grill chains from the ‘90s and early 2000s era, TGI Fridays and Ruby Tuesday, have filed for bankruptcy. Applebee’s, Chili’s longtime rival, has now had seven straight same-store sales declines. Its sales were also struggling before the pandemic. Chili’s coming out of the pandemic was
dabbling in several then-trendy recovery strategies. The company started using virtual brands out of its kitchens to take advantage of excess capacity and generate sales. It also started testing robot servers. Hochman got rid of the servers shortly after he arrived and today jokes that there are 60 sitting in a warehouse. “Want to buy them?” he asked. The company has also stopped using virtual brands, though it still operates its It’s Just Wings concept. Chili’s general managers seem relieved, noting that virtual brands required companies to buy new ingredients and made matters complicated inside the kitchen, especially given the unpredictability of many of the orders. The point of the mock magazine cover was to set a vision. That, Hochman said, is his role at Brinker. “The point of that was leadership,” he said. “I listened to the teams for three months. I understood what we needed to do. And my job as the leader of the company was to envision where we’re going to go, so they could see where they were.” Hochman’s leadership style would take other forms, or disguises, as it were. On In- ternational Week of Happiness at Work last year, for instance, Hochman wore a Willy
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RESTAURANT BUSINESS APRIL 2025
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