Tupelo Honey first opened its doors in 2000 in Asheville, North Carolina. In the two-plus decades since, the concept has grown to over 20 locations and has expanded to markets beyond the Southeast region – markets like Boise and Denver. According to COO Caroline Skinner, who joined the brand in 2013 just as it was branching beyond Asheville, it was a bit of a surprise to see such resonance elsewhere.
“We kind of started to put our feelers out and found people are just attracted to what we were offering – our scratch-made, Southern, comfort component,” she said during a recent interview. “We started to prove ourselves and took our first openings outside of our region as both an experiment and opportunity to see how far this brand could go.”
Tupelo Honey has since mapped out a growth plan that will double its footprint within the next few years, including three openings slated for this year, five for next and six in 2025. The company is then aiming to settle into a six-to-eight-openings-per-year cadence. It is targeting what Skinner calls “in between cities,” like Grand Rapids, Michigan, Milwaukee, and Indianapolis.
Skinner believes that, despite ongoing challenges, now is the time to put the foot on the gas.
“The pandemic challenged us in some positive ways. It allowed us to focus on key components of our brand and people strategy,” she said during a recent interview. “Though we’ve had everything from supply chain and workforce issues, we operated smarter than ever. Those challenges allowed us to focus on product, cross utilization of existing items and a menu that was more profitable and appealing to the guest. Through those challenging years, we solidified who we are and what we have to offer.”
“Who” Tupelo Honey is now hasn’t changed from a culinary perspective. The concept’s signatures include everything from fried green tomatoes and fried chicken and waffles to blackened wild-caught mahi mahi and bourbon peppercorn glazed meatloaf. Of course, there are also salads and sandwiches and signature cocktails and such, all of which firmly adhere to its made-from-scratch, Southern cuisine roots.
What has changed a bit is Tupelo Honey’s “people component,” as Skinner calls it. She was initially charged with establishing a people-first orientation and build the brand’s culture from there and that mindset continues to come first, she said.
“We’ve been very intentional about keeping and building that culture, developing leaders and the workforce around them,” Skinner said. “Since the pandemic, there has been an evolution in how this industry has shifted its orientation toward the employee. Wages are a starting point, but everything around the employee experience has changed. For us, this is what we have prided ourselves on as a company. On the people side, we are small but mighty.”
As an example, Tupelo Honey increased its wages before most states did the same. It now has a fair start wage of $15 an hour – guaranteed regardless of position. It also provides paid time off, parental leave, medical and dental insurance, wellness, transportation and tuition reimbursements and more.
Perhaps its most successful employee-focused initiative is its Biscuits for a Cause program, developed during the pandemic to direct profits from the company’s signature biscuits into an employee relief fund, which helps Tupelo team members facing unexpected hardships.
“We’ve always given away biscuits for causes, but the best decision we ever made was to charge for our biscuits and move those profits to our employees because at that time, we were struggling to support them as best as we could,” Skinner said. “It was a difficult time. Recently, there is less of a Covid impact, so we started pivoting some of those funds to expand training and diversity in our workforce.”
Tupelo Honey created a new, year-long program called Aspire, for instance, which provides coaching and group-setting development work for underrepresented employees. The first Aspire cohort included eight people. The following year, there were 12 employees involved. Skinner said the program has yielded a 75% promotion rate.
“We knew if we truly wanted to be inclusive, we had to start with our workforce. If you see someone in leadership that looks like you, you attract more diverse candidates,” Skinner said. “This has done such great things for our recruitment efforts. As we open more locations, the Biscuits for a Cause fund grows, so we expect more from this.”
Skinner said these collective workforce efforts have benefitted the company’s culture and improved recruitment and retention rates. General managers, for example, spend an average of six years with the company, while hourly turnover rates are around 90% - much lower than industry averages. This, in turn, has lifted the brand’s performance. Tupelo Honey now generates $4 million in average unit volumes, which is supporting its ambitious growth plans.
“We would not have the ability to grow the way we’re growing if we weren’t focusing on the workforce,” Skinner said. “We got smarter through the pandemic by leveraging tech and tools to expand the reach of what we can do, but also by recognizing that we as an industry can’t continue to treat employees the way we have for so long. We have to provide better pay and benefits and if we do that, everything else stabilizes.”
Contact Alicia Kelso at [email protected]