RETAIL & LEISURE
ARIZONA RESTAURANT GROUPS, RANKED BY NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES
Top 10 FOX RESTAURANT CONCEPTS LLC 4455 E. Camelback Road, Suite B100, Phoenix, 85018 // 480-905-6920 // foxrc.com FOUNDED 1998 EMPLOYEES 2,576 PRINCIPAL Sam Fox, founder HIGHEST-RANKING WOMAN Leezie Kim, vice president and general counsel OREGANO’S PIZZA BISTRO 5141N. 40th St., Suite 300, Phoenix, 85018 // 480-829-0898 // oreganos.com FOUNDED 1993 EMPLOYEES 1,300 PRINCIPAL Mark S. Russell, founder and CEO HIGHEST-RANKING WOMAN Lisa Mazzocchi, controller MACAYO RESTAURANTS LLC 1480 E. Bethany Home Road, Suite 130, Phoenix, 85014 // 602-264-1831 // macayo.com FOUNDED 1946 EMPLOYEES 1,050 PRINCIPAL AND HIGHESTRANKING WOMAN Sharisse Johnson, owner and CEO PITA JUNGLE FRANCHISING CORP. 7373 E. Doubletree Ranch Road, Suite B125, Scottsdale, 85258 // 480-969-2427 // pitajungle.com FOUNDED 1994 EMPLOYEES 850 PRINCIPAL AND HIGHEST-RANKING WOMAN Nelly Kohsok, co-owner; Sue McGinley, controller
DIVERSITY SPICES CEO’S LIFE
SHARISSE JOHNSON OWNER AND CEO BY SHARI LOPATIN
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If Macayo Restaurants owner and CEO Sharisse Johnson had to pick her favorite Mexican food, it would be salsa. “It’s so diverse,” Johnson says. “It’s fresh, it’s flavorful, it’s sweet, it’s hot.… I could just live on salsa.” Salsa could be a metaphor for how Johnson’s life turned out: diverse. As the daughter of Macayo’s founders Woody and Victoria Johnson, it might seem a given that Sharisse would take over the family business, but that wasn’t her plan. “I never knew I’d be in the food business,” Johnson says. Originally, she imagined a career in international finance. Johnson caught the travel bug in high school. An Arizona native, she attended Xavier College Preparatory in Phoenix before transferring to Chaparral High School in Scottsdale. The academic structure at Xavier put Johnson so far ahead in her coursework at Chaparral that she finished high school early. “I graduated from high school at 16, kind of by accident,” she says, laughing. Not ready to start college, Johnson enrolled at TASIS, The American School in Switzerland, a high school with a post-graduate program. “I loved finding out there was a world outside of America,” she says. Stuck on travel, Johnson lived all
over the world, from Guadalajara, Mexico, to Dijon, France. Yes, that’s where Dijon mustard comes from, Johnson admits, but she wasn’t interested in food yet. She graduated from Mills College in Oakland, Calif., with a bachelor’s degree in economics, then received a master’s degree in international management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management. In 1984, while living in New York and working for Cigna, Johnson got a call from her older brother. “He said I needed to come home,” Johnson recalls. “So I did. I came home and I ended up taking over the catering department (of Macayo’s).” Thus began Johnson’s journey to her present position. While running the catering department, Johnson joined her brother in various marketing responsibilities. She loved it and soon took over the marketing department. Then, about seven years ago, she became the company’s owner and CEO. Above all, Johnson strives to meet the standards set by her father when he founded the company in 1946. At the same time, the diversity of her own life now flavors the company, too. “It’s balancing the old and the new, and having a lot of respect for my father’s emphasis on quality,” she says.
FX4 LLC – ARBY’S RESTAURANTS 225 E. Germann Road, Suite 150, Gilbert, 85297 // 480-990-7144 // azarbys.com FOUNDED 2000 EMPLOYEES 850 PRINCIPAL Charles Harmon, president HIGHEST-RANKING WOMAN Linda Harmon, co-owner WILDFLOWER BREAD COMPANY 7755 E. Gray Road , Scottsdale, 85260 // 480-9519453 // wildflowerbread.com FOUNDED 1996 EMPLOYEES 600 PRINCIPAL Louis Basile, CEO HIGHEST-RANKING WOMAN Cheryl Campbell, chief financial officer UPWARD PROJECTS 5210 N. Central Ave., Suite101, Phoenix, 85012 // 602-246-7555 // upwardprojects.com FOUNDED 2001 EMPLOYEES 460 PRINCIPALS Craig and Kris DeMarco, Lauren and Wyatt Bailey, owners HIGHEST-RANKING WOMEN Kris DeMarco and Lauren Bailey, owners KONA GRILL INC. 7150 E. Camelback Road, Scottsdale, 85251 // 480-922-8100 // konagrill.com FOUNDED 1998 EMPLOYEES 391 PRINCIPAL Berke Bakay, president and CEO HIGHESTRANKING WOMAN Christi Hing, chief financial officer TILTED KILT PUB & EATERY 664 W. Warner Road, Tempe, 85284 // 480-456-5458 // tiltedkilt.com FOUNDED 2003 EMPLOYEES 370 PRINCIPAL Ron Lynch, president HIGHEST-RANKING WOMAN Torie Lynch, vice president of marketing GRIMALDI’S COAL BRICK OVEN PIZZERIA 15005 N. Northsight Blvd., Scottsdale, 85260 // 480-947-7100 // grimaldispizzeria.com FOUNDED 2003 EMPLOYEES 323 PRINCIPAL Joe Ciolli, CEO HIGHEST-RANKING WOMAN Diane Neville, director of human resources
WHO’S WHO IN BUSINESS // 2015
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