Thrive Restaurant Group is adding something new, but it’s not a restaurant

As Jon Rolph continues to rapidly expand Thrive Restaurant Group — which has 8,000 employees at 200 restaurants over five concepts — he now has a new in-house marketing team, too.

Todd Ramsey and his two employees at his Apples & Arrows branding agency now have joined Thrive.

“Todd and his team have a lot of creativity and dedication, and there’s a lot of trust,” Rolph said.

The two have been talking about working together and forming sort of an internal agency model for years.

“We’ve been joking around that it’s probably the longest interview process known to man,” Rolph said.

He said Thrive marketer Dave Phillips, who has been with the company since 1998, has long planned his retirement this fall, and marketer Ryan Entz left to start Rentz Creative and still will do some work for Thrive.

With that and everything else happening at Thrive, Rolph said that “this is a time and opportunity for change for us.”

“Our company’s at a real inflection point just in our growth story,” he said.

For a long time, Thrive — back when it was known as Sasnak Management — had two brands: Carlos O’Kelly’s and Applebee’s.

Now, it also has HomeGrown, Modern Market Eatery and new Qdoba construction and acquisitions.

Rolph said he and his team are looking at internal structures in every area of the company, which includes marketing.

“This is really us re-engineering our whole marketing department for the size and scale we are now (and) for the next phase of our growth journey.”

Ramsey started his own company 15 years ago and named it Apples & Arrows 12 years ago. He’s done some work with Thrive in the past, but this will be at a completely new level.

By the end of this year, Ramsey will wrap up working for most of his other clients, though Thrive may take on some of the nonprofit work he’s currently doing.

It’s an area that Rolph is interested in, too, and he said, “They have great expertise with nonprofits.”

He said he likes being open-minded to the skill sets employees bring and then build around them.

With so much changing so quickly, Rolph said, “We’ve gotten really comfortable with figuring things out as we go.”