Thrive Restaurant Group becomes nation’s fifth-largest Applebee’s franchisee

Last month, Jim Stevens sold his 22 Applebee’s restaurants, and it turns out the buyer is local: Applebee’s franchisee Jon Rolph and his Thrive Restaurant Group.

That’s only the beginning of the story, though.

He also bought another 20 Applebee’s restaurants from Neighborhood Hospitality, with restaurants in West Virginia, eastern Ohio and eastern Kentucky.

That makes a total of 81 Applebee’s restaurants for Thrive.

“Now we’re the fifth-largest Applebee’s franchisee in the country all of a sudden,” Rolph said.

Still, that’s still only part of the story.

Thrive also has its own concepts, including 16 Carlos O’Kelly’s restaurants, three HomeGrown restaurants, a Peace Love & Pie shop and a pie truck.

Rolph said after doing three HomeGrown sites in Wichita in three years, he’s ready to take the concept out of market next year.

He said he’s still refining his pie business, and he and his staff are working on new concepts as well.

“We have three ideas right now in the hopper.”

Rolph said he thinks Thrive can create a new brand every other year for the next six or seven years, and then there likely will be other new concepts to explore.

“The whole creative aspect of our business is one of my favorite parts of our business,” said Rolph, who was a film major in college.

While he loves the creativity that comes with new concepts, the franchise business is important to Thrive, too.

The combination of the two “makes us a really unique group inside the restaurant space,” Rolph said.

He said the two sides of the business complement each other.

The Applebee’s deals initially were both supposed to close April 15.

“Obviously, the pandemic put all that on hold.”

Not for long, though. Rolph said his team found what he called a new rhythm inside the pandemic and eventually did both deals — mostly while from working at home.

“We’ve built up an engine that can do acquisitions,” he said. “So we’re always on the lookout, and we try to be patient and look for the right opportunities at the right times.”

It’s Rolph who led the way.

When his father, David, and late uncle, Darrel, ran the company as Sasnak Management, they become Applebee’s franchisees with 16 stores in 1998. They grew to 25 stores and were comfortable with that for a long time, Jon Rolph said.

After he joined in 2002 and took over leadership in 2011, “I started wanting to grow.”

His family has known Jim Stevens for decades. In 1989, the company even purchased its current office building on North Rock Road from him.

Rolph and Stevens served on a YMCA board together, and after one meeting, Rolph pulled Stevens aside.

“If you ever go to sell, will you please call us?” he asked.

Rolph said it makes sense to own Applebee’s restaurants in Thrive’s own backyard.

“We’re grateful to have these stores,” he said. “It’s just really helpful to have these here.”

It seems like a major jump for a company to instantly have 42 more restaurants on top of so many already — in a total of a dozen states — but Rolph said Thrive can handle it.

“We’ve got really strong leaders that have grown up in our company . . . that are really stepping up, and I’m proud of them,” he said.

“The key for us is really creating the right leaders inside of our restaurants.”

With that, he said Thrive “can really go as fast and as far” as it wants.

This story was originally published November 9, 2020 at 4:43 AM.