“A city of just under 8,000 halfway between Lexington and Knoxville, Tenn., the event was so notable locally that the town’s mayor and the head of the local economic development authority participated in a groundbreaking.
“The beauty of McAlister’s is it can work in pretty much any market,” Jim Holthouser, CEO of McAlister’s parent company Focus Brands, said in this week’s episode of the Restaurant Business podcast A Deeper Dive. “It can work in dense, urban locations all the way down to tertiary markets.”