Fox Restaurant Concepts founder steps down for hotels
Sam Fox leaves the company he built as The Cheesecake Factory takes full control, redirecting Author & Edit toward hotels, a Nashville diner and a Dallas rooftop.
Fox Restaurant Concepts will lose its founder at the end of 2026, as Sam Fox hands day-to-day control of the group to The Cheesecake Factory and turns his attention to building hotels.
Fox confirmed the exit this week, seven years after selling Fox Restaurant Concepts to the publicly traded chain. The nearly 100-unit group, home to Culinary Dropout, Wild Flower, Dough Bird and Olive & Ivy, will now be entirely owned and operated by The Cheesecake Factory, with no Fox-branded executive left on its org chart.
Fox Restaurant Concepts changes hands
Fewer restaurants, more rooms: Fox trades covers for key cards.
The Cheesecake Factory paid $308 million in cash at closing in 2019, plus up to $45 million more over the following four years. Fox stayed on as chief executive of Fox Restaurant Concepts under the new owner, a role he vacates on December 31.
"Their market cap is as big as it's ever been, and the stores are doing so well," Fox said of The Cheesecake Factory, framing the exit as a handover rather than a falling-out.
What Author & Edit opens next
Fox's attention moves fully to Author & Edit, the hospitality group behind The Global Ambassador, a 141-room Phoenix hotel that opened in December 2023 with six restaurants and investment from NBA guard Devin Booker. Its rooftop restaurant, Théa, is set to open as a standalone address in Dallas in early 2027.
Two more projects land sooner. Au Cheval, the Chicago diner Hogsalt built into a cult brand, opens an outpost in Nashville's 12 South neighborhood this month. The Twelve Thirty Club, Fox's Prohibition-themed supper club co-owned with Justin Timberlake, is scheduled to add a second location in Austin next September.
The split lands as operators keep redrawing the line between restaurants and hotels. Common Table Group's purchase of 57 former Whitbread restaurants runs the opposite direction, widening a restaurant portfolio instead of narrowing one. The Cheesecake Factory, meanwhile, keeps leaning on former Fox Restaurant Concepts brands for growth even as delivery economics keep shifting under every US chain's feet.
"We're going to partner with people, invest in people, and mentor people," Fox said of Author & Edit's next phase. Fewer restaurants, more rooms: after a quarter-century running one of the country's largest independent groups, Fox's next scoreboard counts key cards, not covers.
