Innovative Leadership: How Kimberly Grant Transformed Operations From the Ground Up

To look at her today, Kimberly Grant is every inch the consummate C-suite pro. She’s come a long way from waiting tables to her current role as an independent director for Performance Food Group, and her rise makes for an inspiring tale of sweat equity translating into corporate success.
Grant started at Ruby Tuesday as a waitress in the chain eatery when she was 20. About a year and a half later, she was offered a managerial position. She later became a general manager, a partner in one of the restaurants — and was then asked to move into a financial position within the organization.
 Although she had yet to complete a college degree, the company’s CEO, she recalls, was interested in pairing professionals who had a Master of Business Administration degree with individuals who possessed hands-on operational knowledge in the field and a desire to learn more as a business leader.
 “I knew how to run a business, and I knew how to make money,” Grant shares. “The idea of me moving into finance was to bring an operational lens to the financial team and for me to learn foundational finance skills as a part of my career development.”
Not long after joining the finance team, Grant was promoted to controller, where she further refined her skills to include financial reporting and business modeling. After serving in this capacity for a few years, Grant transitioned back to the operations side of the organization — at first overseeing 40 Ruby Tuesday restaurants and then running more than 100 in the Southeast. Ultimately, she became responsible for all of the company’s locations.
After getting back into operations, Grant went on to complete her undergraduate degree in business administration and then earned a Master of Science in banking and financial services from Boston University.
“It took me nine years to go from waitress to COO of the company,” Grant says. “It was intense, but it was an amazing experience learning how to run a public company, completing my college education, and developing a strong orientation in operations and finance.”

Kimberly Grant’s Unique Approach to Operating Difficult Locations

As an operating executive, Kimberly Grant has deep expertise in leading a decentralized consumer-facing operation with hundreds of locations around the world.
Grant says, “Operationally intensive businesses always have a common thread. There is often a subset group of the locations that are more challenging to operate than the others. Most companies with a decentralized operating structure tend to organize themselves geographically, which makes sense for a lot of reasons. However, in these cases, the more difficult-to-run operations tend to be distributed across many leaders in a company — and that may not necessarily be the right solution.”
While COO at Ruby Tuesday, Grant identified this exact business challenge. Each region of the company had two to three locations that struggled with the same performance issue: high revenues and low margins. As she dug deeper into the problem, she asked herself, “Could we better manage these more difficult-to-operate locations if they were all pulled together as one region led by a leader who possessed a different set of leadership skills?”
This curiosity led Kimberly Grant to develop a new approach and the formation of a region she dubbed “Special Ops.”
This group of restaurants, because they were more challenging to operate, tended to be granted exception status by their regionals on achieving key performance indicators —- they were all high volume, more difficult to staff with managers and hourly employees, had guests were more difficult to handle, and the locations tended to experience higher crime rates overall. But once Grant’s Special Ops region was formed, things changed.
First, the region was placed on a high-profile pedestal within the company. It was made clear that as high-revenue performers, the restaurants delivering best-in-class results, were extremely important for the company to achieve its overall business plan. Second, higher compensation and perks were given to managers who agreed to helm a restaurant in this now prestigious region, including special bonus programs tied to getting key performance indicators on par with the rest of the company’s operations.
The narrative was purposely flipped from being a place you were reassigned to if you were at the end of your career or a low performer to a highly coveted assignment that could get you your next promotion. It didn’t take long for this newly formed region to move from last to first in no time on many of the KPIs. Revenue increased, costs were better contained, theft reduced, employee turnover diminished, and guest satisfaction greatly increased. As a result, it’s not surprising that margins and free cash flow dramatically improved.
The lesson, Grant says, is that “sometimes geographic organizational structures make sense but also, there are times where operations should be organized by the skills required to perform at the highest levels possible.”

Giving Team Members a Voice

Kimberly Grant’s background in leading large decentralized workforces greatly influences her approach to operations.
She left Ruby Tuesday in 2013; she then worked as the CEO of Think Food Group, a Washington, D.C.-based Michelin-awarded chef company. Following her stint at TFG, Grant served as the global head of restaurants and bars at Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts. 
While at the famed hotel group, she initiated a companywide ethos to describe the EPIC level of quality she experienced as she traveled across 73 of the company’s 125+ hotels and resorts around the world: Excellence, Passion, Innovation, and Creativity.
“All together, [it’s] what makes something EPIC in my mind,” she says. “You could have an epic cappuccino; an epic caviar dish; an epic wood-fired pizza — epic is the best you’ve ever had and very aspirational. The pursuit of excellence, a passion for what you do, an eye for innovation, and creativity without boundaries are all part of crafting an extraordinary experience.”

Showing Trust and Championing Your Team

When faced with a need for a new program or initiative, Kimberly Grant tends to engage employees — not just other members of the company’s leadership team — to offer suggestions.
In one instance, an owner of one of the hotels was interested in creating a new dining concept as part of a significant renovation project. In these instances, many hotel companies and owners like to engage celebrity chefs to create new concepts, but instead, Grant suggested taking an alternative approach.
“I said to the owner, ‘We could get a celebrity chef or ultra-successful concept from another location. But we have five of the world’s best chefs in our own hotels here in the region that maybe aren’t celebrities per se — but they’re all Michelin-starred craftsmen,’” she shares. “‘Why don’t we have five of them come together and create your concept instead of relying on one celebrity — leverage the creative minds of a brain trust? Why don’t we make them our celebrities?’”
Some employees may not have any interest in being creative; the ones who do, though, will likely appreciate having an opportunity to actively participate and contribute ideas, she says. Challenging great performers with special projects can serve as a great retention tool.
“You’re going to find the individuals [who] are innovative and thinking differently — and they’ll get a lot of reward out of being asked to do that,” Grant says. “That’s usually where I like to get those types of ideas from.”