Food and drink founders in Northwest Arkansas

Food is one of the industries Northwest Arkansas was built on. Tyson Foods is headquartered in Springdale, Simmons Foods runs from Siloam Springs, and the poultry and processing economy around them still drives a lot of the region's jobs and its truck traffic. On top of that is a restaurant scene that has grown with the population, and the seven guests on this page come from both sides.

Todd Simmons is the industrial side. He has led Simmons Foods, a family company more than seventy years old, as chief executive since 2013, and it's the largest business to appear on this show: about 8,000 employees and $2.4 billion in revenue as reported by Forbes in 2021. His episode covers succession, capital spending and the discipline it takes to run a processor, which makes it a different conversation from every other food episode here.

The rest are restaurant and consumer operators, and most of them grew from a single location. Jordan Wright started Wright's BBQ in Johnson on a trailer-mounted smoker, paid for with a loan from his father and a 401k withdrawal, and worked farmers markets. By the summer of 2026 he had six Arkansas locations and a 2025 James Beard Award semifinalist nod in Best Chef: South. Andrea Allen co-founded Onyx Coffee Lab in Rogers in 2012 and built it into a roaster with about 600 wholesale accounts, ranked the top coffee shop in North America in 2025. Sam Russell co-founded The Buttered Biscuit in Bentonville in 2017 and has grown it to six locations. KK Goodwin started Mamaka Bowls as a University of Arkansas student and runs about nine locations across Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma and North Carolina, none of them franchised. Carl Garrett opened Table Mesa in Bentonville in August 2008 and now runs six restaurants plus catering. Lewis Chase and his partners opened Feed and Folly in Fayetteville in March 2020, then added City Park and The Guisinger by April 2024.

What ties them together is growing past one location, and these founders get specific about it: when to open a second location and when not to, how to keep food cost and quality steady across six kitchens, and how to staff a business that runs on hourly workers in a market where Walmart, Tyson and their vendors are hiring the same people. Simmons answers those questions at industrial scale, and the others answer them one lease at a time. If you're thinking about a second location, this is the page to start on. Seven episodes make this the show's fourth-largest industry group. The list below runs newest first.