About Us

KIC Hospitality is a strategic hospitality consulting firm based in Austin, Texas. Founded by Jeff Gothard and Steve McAloon, KIC partners with restaurant owners and operators to elevate their businesses, sharpen operations, and drive measurable, lasting growth. Our name is an acronym for the word "toast" across the three cultures most meaningful to our founders — Japanese (Kanpai), Welsh (Iechyd da), and American (Cheers) — a reflection of the shared moments that great hospitality creates.

KIC Hospitality was co-founded by Jeff Gothard and Steve McAloon, two operators with decades of combined experience across the U.S. and U.K. Together they have held leadership roles at Ramen Tatsu-ya, Schlotzsky's, Moe's Southwest Grill, Focus Brands, Aramark, Elior, Starbucks, Panda Express, Costa Coffee, Chick-fil-A, and Cinnabon. Jeff brings entrepreneurial creativity, brand-building expertise, and franchise operations and training leadership. Steve adds international franchise leadership, large-scale expansion experience, and brand repositioning expertise. Together they cover the full spectrum — operations, marketing, people, finance, and culinary.

KIC offers three core service areas: Strategic Advisory — working alongside leadership teams to refine concepts, align strategy, and prioritize initiatives that drive results; Operational Excellence — improving systems, training, and day-to-day execution; and Strategic Project Management — ensuring every initiative is delivered on time and on target. For private equity and M&A clients, KIC also provides Operational Due Diligence — a comprehensive assessment covering operations, people, financials, marketing, and culinary execution.

The KIC 360 Approach is our structured, three-phase engagement process — built for your specific business, not a generic playbook.

Phase 1 — Discovery: A deep immersion across five pillars (Operations, Financials, Marketing, People, Culinary). We observe, listen, and learn — no assumptions, no solutions yet.

Phase 2 — Plan Creation: A custom strategic roadmap built entirely from Discovery findings — clear priorities, measurable goals, a realistic path forward.

Phase 3 — Execution: We embed alongside your team to drive accountability, establish performance cadences, and deliver results that last.

KIC's founders are operators first, consultants second. They have run, scaled, and turned around restaurant businesses — they know what good looks like from the inside and what warning signs look like before they become problems.

We don't arrive with pre-baked solutions or generic frameworks. Every engagement starts with Discovery — listening, watching, and learning the specific business before a single recommendation is made. And we stay through execution, embedding alongside your team, to make sure results actually happen.

KIC is based in Austin and Dallas, Texas — markets where the founders have spent decades opening restaurants, building relationships, and growing culturally impactful concepts. But KIC is centrally located within the U.S. and regularly works with clients well beyond Texas. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, and everywhere in between are all accessible quickly. If you're outside Texas, reach out — geography is rarely a barrier.

In a recent engagement with 84 Hospitality Group — the multi-unit operator behind Empire Slice House, Goro Ramen, and Burger Punk — KIC drove a 15% year-over-year uplift in same-store sales, turning a negative sales trend into consistent growth. The client was subsequently nominated for Outstanding Restaurateur 2026 by the James Beard Foundation. KIC was also involved in the creation and opening of Kemuri Tatsu-ya, which has earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand two consecutive years.

Yes. KIC spent 15 months working with 84 Hospitality Group prior to their nomination for Outstanding Restaurateur 2026 by the James Beard Foundation. KIC was also part of the creation and opening of Kemuri Tatsu-ya, which has earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand two years in a row.

KIC has also worked with clients to develop new concepts from the ground up — concepts that are currently seeking investment and building toward launch. As those engagements mature, we look forward to sharing their results. In the meantime, our work across Strategic Advisory, Operational Excellence, and due diligence continues to grow — reach out to learn more about our current client work.

KIC has been most successful working with multi-unit restaurant groups, but will consider single-location concepts with annual volume above $2M. KIC works with independent operators, franchise concepts, and operators preparing for multi-unit expansion — particularly those at an inflection point where the business has proven itself and growth infrastructure needs to be built. KIC also has experience with hotel F&B, catering, and non-restaurant hospitality.

Absolutely. KIC has experience on both sides of the franchise model — as franchisees and as franchisors — and welcomes engagements with either. The founders' backgrounds at Focus Brands, Aramark, Chick-fil-A, Costa Coffee, Cinnabon, and other major systems give KIC a deep, practical understanding of how franchise operations work at scale.

While restaurants are KIC's primary expertise, the founders' backgrounds include significant experience in hotels, catering, and non-restaurant hospitality through roles at large food contract companies like Aramark, Elior, and other large-scale operations. KIC welcomes introductory conversations with operators across the broader hospitality spectrum.

Yes — KIC has worked with clients to develop concepts from scratch. The processes and templates are in place and this is genuinely enjoyable work for the team. Whether you're pre-opening or newly launched, KIC can help you build the operational and strategic foundation from day one.

KIC has deep industry connections and can help operators looking to connect with investors or find operators — though business matching is not KIC's primary focus. Where KIC adds the most value is in operational due diligence for companies seeking to invest in or acquire hospitality brands, giving buyers the operational clarity to transact with confidence.

The most common mistake is failing to memorialize operations before expanding. Tribal knowledge only goes so far when you start adding locations. Building a documented training and operational foundation — SOPs, checklists, training materials — before adding units is critical.

Beyond that, growing organizations almost universally lack shared goals and a real accountability cadence. People become skilled fire-fighters instead of focused goal achievers. Everyone is busy, but nobody is driving toward the same destination.

Beyond lacking a documented growth playbook and shared goals, the most common failure point is under-investing in people and under-training them. The best operators often get stretched beyond breaking because they haven't transferred their knowledge or created redundancy in leadership. When one person holds all the institutional knowledge, the entire system is one bad hire — or one promotion — away from breaking down.