KBP Brands, other fast food franchisees, call KC home.

Some of the nation’s biggest fast-food franchisees call KC home. They say it provides lots of fixings for companies’ andemployees’ success.

Although Kansas City has had notable success in developing industries such as logistics and health care technology, it also has been beefing up another category through the years: fast-food franchisees.

Some of the nation’s largest franchisees are based in the area, including the largest U.S. woman-owned McDonald’s franchisee. Leawood-based KBP Brands is the fifth-largest restaurant franchisee in the U.S. It’s also KFC’s largest franchisee, with more than 790restaurants, and Arby’s second largest, with 116 locations. In 2023, KBP’s revenue climbed to $1.37 billion — ranking it No. 11 on the Kansas City Business Journal’s Private Companies List.

In some ways, Kansas City’s ability to attract sizable franchisees has been organic. But franchisees have plenty of reasons to build and maintain a headquarters here.

KBP relocated its headquarters from Grand Junction, Colorado, in the early 2000s after a sizable acquisition in the Kansas City market. Although its business now spans 31 states, it doesn’t plan on moving. In fact, it invested about $40 million in the buildout and land acquisition for a new Leawood headquarters that it moved into last year. More than 100 employees are based there.

As KBP expands its corporate leadership team and gobbles up restaurants, executives think about where the company will have the ability to attract and retain top talent, and Kansas City delivers, CEO Michael Kulp said.

“Where do we have the ability to truly be an employer of choice — a world-class employer amongst the competitive set — and Kansas City has always stuck out for us on that front,” he said.

Growing up in the business

For Lisa Essig, McDonald’s has become a multigenerational family business. Her dad bought a McDonald’s in Liberty when she was 13, and her first job there was working the drive-thru.

“I always took it as a personal challenge to try and get a smile out of people while they were there with me for a minute or two,” Essig said.

Through high school and college, Essig continued working there and considered turning it into a career. But she wasn’t certain until her junior year of college.

“One of the things that appealed to me at the time was I didn’t feel pigeonholed into a specific area of business,” she said. “I really got to touch on all parts of the business: finance, marketing, HR. ... It’s something new every day. It never gets boring.”

Essig said she never felt pressured to join the family business. Working with her dad offered a behind-the-scenes look and a solid understanding of what to expect when she ventured out on her own. After earning a business management degree, Essig became a McDonald’s restaurant manager and then oversaw the family’s restaurants for about seven years.

At 30, she bought her father’s Liberty restaurant and later acquired his other three McDonald’s locations. Now with 38 restaurants, Essig Family McDonald’s is the largest woman-owned McDonald’s operator in the U.S.

The Kearney-based company is pacing to eclipse $125 million in revenue this year and employs about 2,000 companywide — including three of Essig’s four children.

“I love Kansas City. I can’t imagine living anywhere else. My dad used to refer to it asGod’s country,” said Essig, a member of the 2006 class of Women Who Mean Business . “I think Kansas City has so much to offer, and I’m constantly singing its praises.”

”The area offers a breadth of things to do and a diverse food scene", she said.

“There’s a number of educational opportunities in Kansas City,” she said. “There are cultural opportunities in Kansas City, and not everybody can say that.”

It all adds up to a well-rounded employee base. And despite the restaurant competition, McDonald’s has secured strong customer loyalty in the Kansas City market, she said.

Moving to KC

KBP’s Kulp said multiple employees have relocated to Kansas City from throughout theU.S. They like the area’s access to a high-quality education, the reasonable cost of living and its family-friendly lifestyle. Even if employees weren’t familiar with Kansas City before, they fall in love with the community’s friendliness.

“The way I position it to them is Kansas City is a city where you get all the perks of a big city,” he said. “You get the great restaurants and night life and professional sports teams, and all the things that you would want from a big city. But you don’t deal with all the headaches of a big city.” 

Wendy’s franchisee Legacy Restaurant Group got its start in 1998 in Topeka and relocated to the Kansas City area in 2019 when now-CEO Felix Tollinche invested in the company.

“The main thing I would say about Kansas City is it’s an incredible place,” Tollinche said. “We’ve grown this business from one unit to 53 restaurants, and as we’ve grown, we’ve realized we needed to bring in new skills into the organization. ... The Kansas City metro area has become, in my opinion, a center of excellence for the restaurant industry.” 

Tollinche cited KBP and Applebee’s, which formerly was based in the area. He also noted the influence of Leawood-based NPC International Inc., which was Pizza Hut’s and TheWendy’s Co.’s largest franchisee before it filed for bankruptcy in 2020. It operated 1,227Pizza Huts in 27 states and 393 Wendy’s restaurants in eight states.

Legacy acquired 35 local Wendy’s restaurants from NPC in 2021, which more than tripled its location count.

The metro area also is home to Lenexa-based Genesh Inc., which has 51 Burger Kings, and The Road Inc., which has 25 Denny’s locations. In 2023, they collectively generated nearly $100.6 million in revenue. 

Having those local powerhouses has cultivated a rich talent pool that can help franchisees continue growing, Tollinche said. 

“It’s an incredible environment for the restaurant industry,” he said.

Gaining visibility

At one point, KBP considered relocating to Atlanta. The thought of competing for talent against other big players, including The Coca-Cola Co., killed the idea.

Building a culture and reputation that lets the company compete for employees is valuable in KBP’s business, Kulp said. That’s tougher to do in a larger city.

Kulp said he thinks of all the people the company has been able to pull from other employers in the KC area. He isn’t sure that KBP would have the same visibility or that employees in other cities would recognize the opportunities the company offers.

“For us, we truly believe that we have the ability to recruit and attract anyone right herein Kansas City, and part of that’s because we’ve been able to build a strong reputation here,” Kulp said.

“That’s part of what Kansas City does. They take businesses that be have properly and that are good stewards of the community, and they really do a good job of lifting them up and spotlighting them and giving us a platform to be able to share what we do, such that we can recruit those people.”

Tollinche said it’s tough to pinpoint one “magical thing” that led to a concentration of sizable restaurant franchisees in Kansas City. But he compared it to how Silicon Valley became a hub for technology and Massachusetts became a biotech corridor. Kulp saidKansas City also has benefited from the franchise activity in Wichita, which has trickled into the metro.

The area’s high schools, universities and colleges have become a prime source for scouting and securing talent, Tollinche said. 

“There’s a great amount of talent that we can find here and help them find alternate career paths and great career futures within our industry,” he said. “We sometimes get abad rap about being really high turnover and just a job flipping burgers, but some of the most talented folks have come through our restaurants, whether it’s ours specifically or our competitors’.”

One reason Legacy relocated to Lenexa is because it can build a successful support center with people bringing expertise in human resources, finance and technology. Its IT manager, for example, started out as a general manager at a Legacy restaurant. Another employee at an area restaurant was earning an electrical degree at Johnson CountyCommunity College, and Legacy transferred him to the facilities team.