Texas Roadhouse founder Kent Taylor had a flair for testing those he believed in. He was a factfinder. He’d share books, poll employees on their contemporaries, and drop hints about what he might be considering. But what Taylor concluded was often a mystery.
Before his passing in March 2021, when Taylor took his own life following a battle with post-COVID-19 symptoms, including severe tinnitus, he had started to read books on founders and their leadership transitions. Namely, three in particular—the stories behind Home Depot, Chick-fil-A founder Truett Cathy, and “My Father’s Business,” which gets into the change at Dollar General.
Travis Doster, Texas Roadhouse’s chief communications officer, recalls Taylor one day asking him to send these books to a rising executive in Jerry Morgan, who was named president in mid-December 2020. He didn’t want Morgan to know why he was receiving them or be tipped off his boss might be paying attention. “Because when I come to town,” Doster says of Taylor’s instructions, “I’m going to switch books with him.”
“I immediately called Jerry and told him to buy a highlighter and write in the book,” Doster adds with a laugh.
Taylor loved to jot notes in pencil and blue erasable pen on graph paper. If you’re wondering if those relic pens are still easily found, his longtime assistant, Shelly McGowen, purchased “like 10,000 of them” years ago, Doster says. Employees often bantered of Taylor’s preference, “nothing says permanent decisions like an erasable pen.”
What Taylor was hoping to uncover, though, was how Morgan would process information and how much he’d study. He had inclinations the company’s 2001 Managing Partner of the Year, who rose to regional market partner in 2015, overseeing more than 120 Texas Roadhouses in 14 states, was the right person for a weighty job—his successor.
It’ll soon be coming on five years since Morgan became just that. Like others, he had a feeling Taylor was trying to telegraph the plan without fully saying it. The conversation was going on, in one respect or another, Morgan says, for a few years. He knew the store side. There was little doubt there, and Taylor understood operators were comfortable with that kind of hands-on resume.
Morgan was one of Taylor’s famed “crazies,” or store leaders who broke convention at times to make sales happen. Taylor boasted a rebellious spirit himself, going back to Bennigan’s in the 1980s and even KFC, where he used to tell stories of tweaking recipes and selling bottled water when his bosses asked him not to.
Morgan worked at Texas Roadhouse for 25 years and was known to spend hours weighing his store’s steaks and tasting each menu item.
He landed in Louisville, Kentucky, on December 17, 2020, and was announced publicly as president, donning a baseball cap and a three-quarter Texas Roadhouse zip-up.
Taylor didn’t offer Morgan any timeline or assurances. He was there to learn how corporate connected with unit-level performance; to host one-on-ones, and get to know leaders through various functions.
“I knew how to make a restaurant open, operate, and close quality shifts, and to hire great people and partners,” Morgan says. “But how did the other side work? I had made numerous trips over the years, but I didn’t know how it all came together.”
The learning period lasted four months. When Taylor passed, there was a memorial service, a Founder’s Day to ideate, museum to plan, statue to erect, and other theater-of-grief tasks that have a way of pausing time. Taylor had led Texas Roadhouse for 28-and-a-half years. Morgan says many folks, himself included, saw Taylor as the Norman Brinker of our time. “The one guy who could really get a chain to be highly successful and was still leading it,” he says. “And so, we just saw Kent and revered him in that manner.”
Naturally, there was a stretch of days and weeks trying to digest events and, for Morgan, accept responsibility. On this end, Taylor made his instructions clearer than usual.
He tore out a legal sheet piece of paper and wrote, in blue ink, Jerry Morgan (CEO). Taylor, 65 years old at the time, signed and dated it 3-18-2021—the day he died.
McGowen had the sheet framed and, to this day, Morgan keeps it in his office as a reminder of his stewardship.
He recalls sitting in meetings during emotionally charged days and leaders asking, “is a decision made?”
“OK, well, now who’s going to present it to Kent?”
Morgan realized everyone needed time. The process at Texas Roadhouse was so ingrained that habits had to unwind. So Morgan asked Doster to help him draft a “promise letter.”
The company-wide communication was, Morgan says, him “really accepting the job” and assuming the task of leading one of the world’s most successful casual-dining chains.
“When I looked at that whole piece of it, he gave me the job, but the day I wrote the letter and made a promise to the company was when I accepted the responsibility to be their leader,” he says. “And from that moment, I just moved forward.”
A leader in the making, and learning on the job
Growing up in Sarasota, Florida, Morgan was a 6-foot, 145-pound tight end/defensive lineman who learned a couple of early lessons before he reached his 20s: One, he was more interested in football than anything else, and, secondly, he also needed half a foot and another 50 pounds to compete. So, he was realistic.
One thing Morgan didn’t want to do, however, was get into restaurants or grocery stores. He felt the sectors didn’t garner the respect they deserved, and he wouldn’t, either, if he made it a career. Morgan received his first taste of retail and customer service in the garden center of now-defunct discount department store Woolco. After, he moved to Houston, Texas, to join his dad and uncle. He worked for Telesphere, a company installing long-distance dialers in hotels across America. Morgan did so for a couple of years until his uncle, a local lawyer, told him a story. He was doing legal work for an operator who owned 10 McDonald’s and “couldn’t believe how much money this guy was making.” He went and got a franchise partnership and bought two Burger Kings in Waco, Texas, and asked Morgan to come along. Morgan cleared the idea with his dad.
What he found was restaurants didn’t feel all that different from sports. He enjoyed the frenetic shifts, teamwork, and reality silver spoons aren’t handed out for free in this business. The ladder to success is accessible to anybody willing to work hard enough and grab it.
Restaurants fit the way Morgan viewed success and how he’d eventually frame his plans for Texas Roadhouse.
He talks today about “running one store, one market, one region, one company.” The philosophies don’t change all that much stop-to-stop. You gather information. You make a decision. And you try to get buy-in along the way.
It’s “been a heck of a journey” honing that mindset at Texas Roadhouse.
“Our sales have been incredible. The respect that we’ve received as an organization has just been unbelievable,” Morgan says. “When people say to me Kent Taylor would be very proud of not only what I’ve done, but what this company has done in the last five years, it does make it worth it to me.”
How Morgan kept Texas Roadhouse rolling and built on Taylor’s legacy unfolded quite differently in approach. That, too, is something Taylor appeared to recognize as a strength in Morgan and knew operators would respect beyond his sales record.
Morgan refers to himself not as a CEO, but as a “head coach.” He sees his job as ensuring the layers of Texas Roadhouse function at a high level through collaboration and communication.
Taylor, in his way, never specifically told Morgan why he thought he had the makeup to be his successor. He did share with Morgan he was a likeable leader and someone who worked well with others. Taylor, on the other hand, was an enigmatic, introverted CEO who kept colleagues on their toes. He was brilliant and steadfast, and always consumer and operator centric. Taylor would wait in line to eat at Texas Roadhouse and drove Chevy Suburbans stuffed with clutter, from architectural plans to a Santa suit.
But he admittedly had to develop a persona, “Bubba,” to play a certain character when it came to front-facing duties. He’d wear costumes, wigs, cowboy hats—all to put on a mask and do the things he was least comfortable doing.
Morgan says pundits and fans liked to say, “Kent Taylor is Texas Roadhouse.” Yet if you asked Taylor, he’d tell you it was about partners and “the Roadie nation,” a term the company uses to describe fanatics.
Morgan himself was a “Roadie” and somebody who could bridge the external and operational corners of running the company. He was respected because he got results, but also outward and more of a people-person than Taylor, who enjoyed yearly three-month skiing trips and was often on the road, growing the company and making deals.
Morgan managed the first Texas Roadhouse in Texas—Grand Prairie—that opened in 1997 and historically was one of the chain’s top performers. Morgan was recruited by Steve Ortiz, who knew Taylor from Bennigan’s and later rose to COO. Morgan asked Ortiz if Taylor was, indeed, someone you wanted to get into business with. Ortiz didn’t hesitate, and this path began.
“At each level, the results that you get create respect,” Morgan says. “And then, what do you do with that respect? Do you get arrogant, or do you get humble and go back to work?”
Taylor had begun to observe a sturdiness in Morgan and, sort of, trickled out hints. The day Ortiz retired, Taylor called Morgan and informed him there was a name and envelope in his desk. He told him, “The name changed that day.” Taylor didn’t say it was now “Jerry Morgan;” he just let him know it could be. About eight years later when then-president Scott Colosi retired, Morgan received another call.
“And he said, ‘the name in that desk is different.’ So, he was telling me that maybe he saw me as that kind of leader,” Morgan says. “And I responded, ‘that’s really cool. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. And I’m going to go back to work.’”
In the months ahead, Taylor rang “every single person in the company” and asked them what it was like working for Morgan. He’d pose another question—“give me three names who should replace me.” Once more, Taylor never shared with anybody what he heard back. “At one point, he did say, it was a pretty obvious choice,” Morgan says.
For the reticent Taylor, it was a resounding endorsement.
Texas Roadhouse’s next era
Morgan has adjusted over the years from accepting Taylor’s torch to carrying it to understanding how he might do so in his own style.
It comes back to Morgan’s “coaching mentality.” He made sure he understood people’s jobs, whether it was training, marketing, or legal. Morgan says his position has always been about trusting and inspiring people and holding them accountable. The latter is a place, he notes, where high-leadership executives often struggle. It’s the difference between executing in the trenches and holding others to that standard.
Firstly, though, not a morning arrives where Morgan doesn’t consider the mission, values, and purpose of Texas Roadhouse. Everything the company does today builds on what Taylor worked to nurture. Morgan seeks out leaders who are in it for Texas Roadhouse.
His first assessment came with certified counselor G. Dan Lumpkin. The coaching expert provided a predictive index with a 17-page report. Morgan had to answer 2,000 questions and Lumpkin evaluated his results against other CEOs.
It claimed Morgan was “bold, aggressive, and decisive.”
“I said, I’m good with that,” Morgan says.
“The bottom line is, Kent always told me, you’re never going to make everybody happy. Make the decision and move forward. And if it’s wrong, change it,” Morgan adds.
Texas Roadhouse lives through a “MVP” lens: “Mission. Values. Purpose.”
Morgan, illustrating how the operator gene never quite leaves you, says the company owes its employees a quality shift, every day. It owes guests top-end experience and value they can trust. And it owes shareholders the ability to run a solid business.
On that final point, Morgan took over a chain that took its pandemic lumps and came out firing.
In the week ending March 3, Texas Roadhouse units averaged weekly sales of $118,512. Of that, only $9,115 came outside the four walls. By March 24, those numbers were $29,432 and $25,938, respectively. And then, Texas Roadhouse figured things out, leveraging ideas of managing partners and serving a grateful customer.
Within a week, Texas Roadhouse jolted to-go sales to $41,892, a number that would rise into the high $50,000, low $60,000 range by late April.
In Q2 of 2025, as things have settled and continued to widen, Texas Roadhouse posted same-store sales of 5.8 percent for a two-year stack of 15.1 percent during a time when many restaurant peers are scratching to stay above the line. Average weekly sales were $167,350, of which $22,243 stemmed from to-go sales.
Morgan in October 2024 rang the closing bell to mark the brand’s 20th anniversary as a publicly traded company. It was a reflective moment remembering when Taylor and the chain’s mascot, Andy the Armadillo, opened the Nasdaq Stock Exchange on October 5, 2004. Texas Roadhouse had roughly 174 stores and 10,000 employees.
When Morgan got up there, the company had swelled to nearly 775 stores (there were 797 this past quarter) and 100,000 workers spread across three concepts—fast casual Jaggers and burger and pizza brand Bubba’s 33 included. It generated more than $5.373 billion in revenue in 2024, up 16 percent, year-over-year.
And regarding its stock, Texas Roadhouse traded for $11.50 on October 8 of that opening run. More recently, it was at $173 in mid-October 2025.
The company was a $2 billion enterprise in 2017, doubled to $4.014 billion over the next five years, and is well on its way to $8 billion over the next decade, as Morgan outlined last year.
All that success, he adds, has led to a lot of back-patting for Texas Roadhouse. Among his duties, he considers ensuring the brand never gets comfortable a key one.
Morgan believes Texas Roadhouse will avoid complacency as long as it remains committed to a larger vision. He’s regularly faced with decisions that affect 100,000 employees or 250 million guests. “When you look at it, you ask, are you making a decision that’s great for your employees? Are you making a decision that’s great for your guests? Or are you making a decision that’s great for the organization? If you can get all three of those boxes checked, then you’re in great shape,” Morgan says.
Embracing the “rowdy” and staying ahead
It’s likely Taylor saw in Morgan somebody who would never let the brand drift. One thing about Texas Roadhouse is it hasn’t suffered for identity, no matter what’s going on macro-wise. Taylor liked to rail against norms on earnings calls and answer complicated investor questions with short and direct quips. Why is the brand winning? Perhaps it has something to do with having fully staffed restaurants. Why aren’t you getting into delivery? Let other chains serve guests cold steaks.
Morgan, of course, lived this mantra each shift as an operator. The music is loud. There’s energy in restaurants. Morgan says the No. 1 thing guests tell Texas Roadhouse is to turn the volume down. But those who intimately know the brand also understand it’s a non-negotiable and a reason the whole thing works. Being able to separate the vocal minority from what matters is something that takes a Texas Roadhouse lifer to grasp.
Or, in Morgan’s words, “we have to believe that’s something that’s really important to our business.”
The same is true of free peanuts and the basket of bread and cinnamon butter. Morgan remarks, even before steak, customers talk about those two traits. Everywhere he goes, he says, on a plane, for instance, if Morgan is wearing a Texas Roadhouse logo somebody will tell him to bring the rolls before he gets onboard.
“We love that,” Morgan says.
The secret to Texas Roadhouse, so to speak, has never been difficult to place. It stays true to its principles—“Legendary Food and Legendary Service” —and compounds those hallmarks with running great restaurants. The managing partner model was one Taylor implemented because he thought operators would compete for success and hold to his ideals (he also needed the financial uplift). Operators spend $25,000—the first forked up $30,000—sign a multi-year contract, and get 10 percent of the store’s bottom line in addition to their salary.
These partners provide the foundation for Texas Roadhouse. Morgan and management conduct a fall tour to tap their ingenuity and check in. They help with pricing decisions, market observations, and, as Morgan proved, help build the pipeline from the inside out, with leaders who breathe Texas Roadhouse’s ethos. Doster says Morgan has a superpower for “listening to learn, not listening to respond.”
Operators have an hour to ask any question they want. “I just don’t think you can underestimate the power of that partnership with our operators,” Doster says.
Morgan says he’s proud of how the company and organization came together following Taylor’s passing and what’s unfurled since. “When you go through a tragic loss, you can either heal as a company or you can break apart,” he says. “You can start pointing fingers at each other. For us to all come together and heal and continue to focus on providing Legendary Food and Legendary Service, running great restaurants, and living our mission and our values and our purpose, and growing as a company, it’s meant everything.”
Staying the course and charting a new one
The first thing Texas Roadhouse did when it started to climb out of the pandemic was get staffed. It spent time investing in headcount, store wise and management, and Morgan feels it’s paid dividends as sales slope upward.
Texas Roadhouse has steadied the rampant turnover of post-COVID life and produced churn rates, Morgan says, at industry lows. That’s leading to more productive employees who, when they stay, signal they’re making money and having fun, he explains.
Guests in turn receive the experience and consistency expected of Texas Roadhouse. Even as prices hiked industry-wide, the brand never skimped on portions or service. “If I’m charging you more, wouldn’t you expect a little bit better food or better service?” Morgan says.
“We’ve never changed any of our recipes. We’re just trying to continue to deliver a great experience at a value price,” he adds. “You can spend a lot of money at Texas Roadhouse. But there’s also a value portion of the menu that’s always been there that I think protects us. We want to be very careful about that.”
Plainly, through all the industry’s value turmoil, Texas Roadhouse’s top-line growth confirms to Morgan people view the brand as a “good deal.” And that boils down to the aforementioned levers of trust, service, consistency, and never losing sight of what customers need—answers that come from managing partners making decisions on the ground level.
Along these lines, however, Morgan says, Texas Roadhouse wants to talk about staying true to itself while also evolving. Even going back a decade, the chain was considering pay-at-the-table, for example. It eventually tried to let diners use phones or Apple Pay, etc., yet it never took hold.
Then, in 2022, the company partnered with Ziosk on “Roadhouse Pay” tablets that allow customers to check out when they’re ready. Immediately, Morgan says, Texas Roadhouse saw an 80 percent response. Nearly 90 percent of guests use them today. Customers can’t reorder apps or drinks—it’s strictly a convenience play so people can pay on their own terms.
The industry in those days was sorting through a torrent of post-COVID technology. Brands hurried to open access and had begun to try and decode the options. A side effect was employees and leaders gained exposure.
Morgan says Texas Roadhouse started to have people come over from other chains who had used a lot of the options at hand. One was digital kitchen technology, or KDS. The company tried it first at Jaggers and Bubba’s. Texas Roadhouse was a more difficult concept because it was so oriented, Morgan says, onto tickets and the old style. And it was successful doing so.
“But we also knew we had to try to evolve,” he says.
Texas Roadhouse customized an option and put it in a restaurant. It was a success. The next 10 worked as well. And soon, the word got out and operators wanted in. So, the company laid out a three-year plan to update every restaurant, which should happen by year’s end.
While still relatively early, Morgan said learnings stem from being more organized. The kitchen is calmer since cooks don’t have to hear paper being pulled and see tickets everywhere. The bump screen allows them to focus on orders in front of them versus watching the rail of dozens of tickets stack up, which can be intimidating at times.
“It’s been a huge win for us,” Morgan says.
Texas Roadhouse has gotten better at takeout (still no delivery). It’s installed bump outs where sensible and improved its approach. It’s also worked on the mobile app and integrated a waitlist where customers can put their name down. That, Morgan says, has been a game-changer.
The brand has begun to consider handheld tablet ordering versus a server running over to a point-of-sale as well.
But overall, Texas Roadhouse wants technology to complement experience and help it become more efficient. It won’t replace or change the company’s DNA, Morgan says.
And that brings him back to what’s still to come. There’s growth on several fronts going into 2026, whether it’s the core Texas Roadhouse brand, Jaggers, or Bubba’s 33—the latter of which has 200-store ambitions (there were 53 in Q2). Jaggers touted 15 units and is ramping up franchising. It’s a fast casual, employees like to picture, created from Taylor driving one day with his grandchildren and getting annoyed they wanted to eat different things. The result being a mashup of burgers, chicken, salads, shakes, and more. A Jaggers in Lexington, Kentucky, earlier this year marked the 800th systemwide opening for the company.
As Texas Roadhouse debuts stores, across the portfolio, Morgan says he won’t lose sight of the soul the brand was founded on. Restaurants get to teach people soft skills and show them how to lead in ways other sectors simply cannot, he notes. Plus, you get to run a business and control your destiny, just as Taylor did. “And I think that’s the part when you think about this generation that’s coming up that’s very entrepreneurial driven, our company is built off that entrepreneurial spirit,” Morgan says. “You get to be an owner-operator, but you have responsibilities to the company. But to me, it’s always been about how do we create an environment where our employees love to work? That is what defines you as a leader.”
So what kind of leader has Morgan grown into, five years in? Doster says Taylor was not a “rah-rah” guy or someone who was overly approachable. He was quiet and earned respect through vision and action. Morgan does that, too, but he has a knack for bringing folks together.
He sits in the café and dines with employees. And one of the first things Morgan did was start a softball team. “Imagine another company right now where you just started at Roadhouse and you may work in IT or you work in purchasing, and you’re on the team with the CEO,” Doster says.
Morgan chimes in Texas Roadhouse collected back-to-back softball titles, including an undefeated season, over the past four years.
“I’m a part of Roadie Nation, too,” Morgan says. “And I’ve got a job to do.”
