Frank Gross

Frank hails from upstate New York and graduated from State University of New York in Business Administration. During this time, he began his industry operations career in hotel restaurants in Albany.

Frank always enjoyed restaurant Operations and left New York in 1976 to join Jerrico, Inc. (Long John Silver’s) in Lexington, Kentucky. There he served as Area Supervisor until 1980 when he was promoted to Director of Operations. At LJS Frank continued to climb the operations’ organizational ranks and in 1986 was named Regional Vice President of Operations, transforming a struggling region to profitability in less than one year.

In 1988, Frank joined Black-Eyed Pea Restaurants USA’s 114-unit company-owned quick-service Mexican restaurant chain, Taco Bueno in Dallas, TX as Vice President of Operations. In his new role, Frank implemented operating systems that tripled profits within two years. He also led the initiative to upgrade the quality, service, and cleanliness of the restaurants through elevated training and development programs and improved supervision. One of his most significant contributions at Taco Bueno was his direction of the design and creation of profitable menu items and other products to compete with Taco Bell.

Recognizing Frank’s success at Taco Bueno, Black-Eyed Pea Restaurants tapped Frank to lead operations as their Vice President, Operations, responsible for 110 company-owned and eighty-nine franchise casual dining restaurants with sales more than $350M. Under Frank’s leadership at Black-Eyed Pea, the brand grew, opening forty-five restaurants in fifteen markets and he strategically designed systems which increased sales and profits by 17%. Frank standardized all company operations procedures and implemented a new service system which focused on the guest experience.

Frank’s innovation and results-oriented focus led him to Fazoli’s in 1996 as Western Division Group Chairman of Operations. When he joined Fazoli’s he was responsible for 71 Company-owned restaurants supervised by ten Area Supervisors across ten states. He quickly began implementing aggressive cost controls, lowering associate turnover, and increasing Guest Satisfaction scores to record levels by developing strong talented ops teams.

Although Frank was a skilled operator, his talents in analyzing food processes, P&L management, labor optimization and operations cost controls led to impactful results in lower costs and accelerated through-put. His professional achievements along with his gentle, approachable nature, uniquely positioned him as the Director of Operations Services for Fazoli’s. He quickly made an impact utilizing technology to improve a scheduling and deployment model which reduced restaurant level costs, he eliminated $1.2M in administrative inefficiencies, he improved drive-thru service times by 55 seconds and improved profits. While Director of Ops Services, he also served as Interim VP of Supply Chain reducing products and distribution costs by $1.5M. Frank’s work in Operations and his contributions to Fazoli’s were recognized as recipient of the Robert Faucett Leadership Award.

In 2015 Frank joined Bella Notte Restaurant Group (parent company of Bella Notte Italian Trattoria, Bella Café, and Smashing Tomato Pizza restaurants) where he remains today as Chief Operating Officer. Frank’s impact at the Bella Notte organization has been nothing short of remarkable. Under his leadership, he has implemented new successful POS and BOH systems for the company and he developed a unified labor system for each individual concept. Much of his success can be understood through results as the company’s sales have grown 81% since 2015.

Although restaurant operations have always been Frank’s professional passion, his true love is for his family. Frank is a devoted husband and father and he and his beloved wife Kathy will celebrate their 35th anniversary this year. Together they have raised three wonderful sons, Nicholas, Christopher, and Matthew, for whom they are immensely proud.