President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, BRINKER INTL INC
Brinker International CEO Kevin Hochman goes one-on-one with Jim Cramer
Brinker International CEO Kevin Hochman joins 'Mad Money' host Jim Cramer to talk Q2 earnings, social media marketing and ...
About Kevin Hochman
Kevin Hochman, president and CEO of Brinker International, appeared on the podcast *Legacy Makers* in July 2025, where he discussed his leadership philosophy and approach to work-life balance. Hochman said he tells employees to "always choose family" when faced with a conflict between family and work, adding that "work may not be" around for them. He also attributed the speed of Chili's turnaround to a policy of not working on "anything small," stating that the company only focuses on items aligned with its strategy and does not waste money or people's time. During the conversation, Hochman emphasized the importance of training and trusting employees as a leader's primary job, noting that leaders must learn to delegate and coach rather than do everything themselves. He credited his wife's family, the McMillan family, with teaching him about leadership and being a family person.
Transcript (19 segments)
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Jim Cramer0:01
You heard about it all day. This earnings season has been filled with disappointment in the restaurant space. You know, we got the cava. That was really bad. The sweetgreen. But some of these companies always seem to come through because they have something different, like Brinker International, the parent company of Chili's and Maggiano's. This morning, Brinker reported a beautiful top and bottom line beat with a mind boggling 23.7% same store sales numbers from the Chili's business. They just keep doing it. Even better, management issued a strong forecast for the year ahead, which is why the stock rallied over 1.6% today, although at one point it was up even bigger. Brinker has been a winner in this environment because they offer their customers an incredible value proposition over the stock, up roughly 124% of the past year. Can we expect it to keep running? Let's take a closer look with Kevin Hochman, the president and CEO of Brinker International, to learn more about the quarter and what comes next. Mr. Hochman, welcome back to Mad Money.
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Kevin Hochman0:58
Hey, thanks for having me on the show, Jim.
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Jim Cramer1:02
Okay, so let me ask something, Kevin. Why is TikTok? Every time you look, somebody's doing triple dipper stuff. How does that happen? What is it? What is it? An algorithm. What occurs?
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Kevin Hochman1:13
Well, the first algorithm is we have the best marketing team in the entire world. So these guys just got honored by AD Age for the literally the brand of the year. And not just restaurants, every industry. So we've got a really well equipped marketing team. You know, we refortified our marketing budgets three years ago. We spent about $32 million on marketing. This past fiscal. We just finished. We spent 137 million. So they actually have ammo with which to do marketing. And they're doing a phenomenal job. They're showing how our Chili's proposition is relevant to people's lives, and it's working.
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Jim Cramer1:44
So other people just come in naturally. You're not paying any of these people, and they're just doing things because they think it looks cool and fun. And yet it's the greatest. It's better advertising you're going to get if you actually spend money and put it on TV. Well.
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Kevin Hochman1:58
It's a combination of both, Jim. So it's a real discipline where you brief agencies and you let the influencers know what are the things that you have, and then you give them the freedom to create. And these creators do amazing things with our products. And so some of it is paid endorsement, and a lot of it is not paid endorsement, because when people see what's going on, they go inside the restaurant, they see that exactly what they see on social media. They can recreate in the restaurant. They have an amazing experience and they want to post themselves. And that's one of the big things about our turnaround a lot of people don't know is that our operation has gotten so much stronger under Aaron White and Doug Cummings. They've done a phenomenal job getting Chili's to where it should be, which is a great guest experience with great food now.
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Jim Cramer2:37
I mean, it's also I was looking at just over three year period the amount of cost that you've taken out is extraordinary. What are the central things that make it so? If you're listening and you've got a business you should be thinking of to take out costs very clearly.
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Kevin Hochman2:52
Yeah. Well, you know, unique to restaurants. I don't know if it's that unique to restaurants, but everybody's got cost pressure, everybody's got labor pressure. So the number one thing that you can do to offset that is to continue to grow your business. Right. It's going to be very, very difficult to simply cost cut your way to control margins and maintain margins with the inflationary environment that we all have to deal with. So number one is we got back to growth. So we are an invest to grow mode. We are investing in the business. You know what I shared on the earnings call. We spent hundreds of millions of dollars on labor, on repairing the restaurants, on upgrading the food. And that's having a big payback to the business right now. Because our AUVs are so much higher, we get leverage on the fixed costs. And that's one way that we're able to really explode margins. You know, our margins when I started were around 12% this fiscal year. We just finished and announced we were at 18%. So when you have over 40% growth in AUVs and margin improvement of 600 basis points, really good things happen to absolutely.
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Jim Cramer3:49
Leverage is great. One of the reasons why I bring that out is because, you know, we've seen what's happened with I don't mean to pick on any of these guys and I know them. They're all nice. But when you look at Sweetgreen and you look at cava, they are not able to get the amount of money they need. And they've also got the whammy the other way. They're I think there's tough costs too much. What I find amazing is that you've been able to make even more money out of a $10 offering than you did a year ago, because otherwise what these guys would say is, I don't know if he can, you know, we will lose money if we do something at $10. I don't think that's true. If they follow your precepts.
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Kevin Hochman4:26
Yeah. You know, it is a challenge out there. You know, we always listen to a fellow CEO in QSR, one of the big chains talk about during their earnings calls that people go up to their drive thru, they see over $10 combo meals. And there's people feel differently about that brand. In terms of the value equation, you know, we've been able to hold 1099 now for a long time. Doesn't matter where you go in the country, even in higher wage states like California, you're always able to get a 1099 meal from Chili's, and it's always something good. You know, it's one of our burgers or one of our other options that, quite frankly, add a ton of value to that guest. And they don't need a coupon, they don't need an app. We make it really easy to get abundant value. And I think that's winning right now in the market.
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Jim Cramer5:07
Now, why are you so perceptive? As I say this from the restaurant business that you need to have name brand, that you need to have name brand tequila, even if tequila that is, you know, just the standard tequila that has to be all regulated by the state. But you know that if you have name brand tequila in that market, people like it more, even though you and I might say, you know what? You really can't tell the difference. It doesn't matter. People will pay.
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Kevin Hochman5:29
Yeah. You know, at the end of the day, we have a barbell strategy on margaritas. So, you know, whether you want to get, you know, our $6 marg of the month, I got our shark bite here, which is phenomenal. Or we got, you know, we have a $10 patron margarita, which is more of a premium frozen, you know, regardless of what price point that you're at, you want something of quality of substance. You want it served well. You want it in a nice atmosphere. Everybody wants that. That's not unique to people that just want to buy, you know, the best tequila or the best steak, etc. And so that's one of the reasons why we've been delivering on value. You know, people the bears have said, hey, they can under you can get undercut. Chili's. Right, right. That's actually happened. But we haven't seen any change in our in our sales. Same store sales trajectory because we're delivering the total experience, not just the low price.
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Jim Cramer6:13
Now, I have to ask you, you're the best in the industry right now. Why are you working on four new images in Dallas? Why we ain't broke. Don't fix Kevin.
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Kevin Hochman6:26
Well, we still have opportunities in food and service and atmosphere. In fact, that's the fundamentals of casual dining and the only way we're going to continue to grow the business quarter after quarter. And, and, and these impressive numbers is to continue to be better versus year ago. Right. So on food, we still have 50% of our menu. We think we can upgrade. We're making millions of dollars of investments in core ingredients. We call it the Chili's food pyramid of bacon, bacon bits Ranch and Mayo. Those are all going to be upgraded this year on service. We're going to continue to add labor to improve our service model. And then on atmosphere, we've got a, you know, about 200 restaurants that haven't been touched in a few years that need a bit of love. And that's what this Reimage program is about. We're going to test it here in Dallas by the end of the calendar year. We'll have the learnings from those four, and then we're going to start rolling it out 10% of year, over 100 restaurants every year for the next ten years. And we'll always have a fresh estate. So I couldn't be more excited about the focus on the fundamentals. That's going to be the next three years of our turnaround, and we'll be able to comp the comp, the comp.
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Jim Cramer7:26
Look, I want to congratulate you. You always give us value. It's always fun. It's always fun. I can see why people do their TikToks there. I've been telling my daughter to come do those TikToks all the time and come with me. She's a vegetarian, but it doesn't matter. You got plenty, even for vegetarians. You really do. The place got everything?
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Kevin Hochman7:43
Yeah. There's something. There's something for everybody. Everybody at Chili's, you know, whether, you know, whether you want low priced margaritas or something more premium. If you want vegetarian, we do vegan. We got to look at that one. But we pretty much have everything covered. And that's what's so cool. We're winning is every every demographic, every income level. Everybody is coming to Chili's more often. And that's been the key to our success. Chili's is forever.
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Jim Cramer8:03
Well, congratulations to you. It really has worked. Kevin Hoffman is the president and CEO of Brinker Symbol. Another terrific quarter. Thank you. Kevin, really good to see you.
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Kevin Hochman8:12
Hey, thanks so much, Jim. And a big shout out to our team members. You're doing a great job.
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Jim Cramer8:17
You deserve it. That money's back after the break.