Name: Tamra Kennedy
Title: Franchise Operator
Company: Twin City T.J.’s
No. of units by brand: 6 Taco John’s
Age: 62
Family: One son, Jesse, 40
Years in franchising: 41
Years in current position: 27
From slinging pizzas as a teenage waitress at Pizza Hut to running a thriving portfolio of six Taco John’s restaurants across the Minneapolis–St. Paul metro, Tamra Kennedy’s journey is a masterclass in franchising success. With more than 40 years in the restaurant industry, she’s a seasoned operator and a passionate champion for the franchise model and the doors it can open for entrepreneurs from all walks of life.
Kennedy started her career in 1984 as a secretary for a company that owned Taco John’s and Burger King franchises. Early on, she was tasked with creating a spreadsheet that tracked food supply, cost management, and employee training across each location. She later became the office manager and handled administrative duties such as accounting, human resources, and payroll.
She spent more than a decade learning the restaurant business. When her boss was looking to retire and sell the stores, Kennedy asked about buying them. She knew she had mastered the administrative side, but he told her she needed to spend the next year learning about restaurant operations to prepare herself for franchise ownership. She put in the extra hours on nights and weekends in addition to her regular daily responsibilities. She was also assigned to turn around the lowest-performing store in the franchise group.
Kennedy taught herself all aspects of store operations and purchased the group of restaurants in 1999. The operations experience gave her an appreciation for frontline teams.
“Restaurants are the single best business for young people to learn skills they will need later in their careers,” she says. “It teaches them how to manage people, money, and inventory. It provides an opportunity for those who didn’t go to college to receive on-the-job training. If and when they move on from us, they can take what they learned and the skills they acquired to another job. My guarantee is that when people come and work for us, they will be able to grow and shine.”
Kennedy has seen considerable changes in the restaurant industry during her career, including changing laws and regulations. In addition, customer payment shifted from cash to credit cards, which tack on processing fees.
She says speed of service is as important today as it was when she started. Customers should enjoy connecting over shared meals at her restaurants, and it’s her team’s job to deliver a superior guest experience. The company’s motto is “Our family feeds friends.”
Kennedy has served as a trusted voice and mentor to other female business owners. In 2023, she was honored by the International Franchise Association (IFA) with the Bonny LeVine Award, which recognizes women for their business and professional accomplishments within franchising.
“Some women may not have the opportunity or know-how to work their way up the ladder, so I want to share all I can about my experience and help them get through any problems or obstacles,” Kennedy says. “There are so many fierce, fabulous women in franchising, and I am honored to celebrate their work with them.”
Kennedy serves on several IFA boards and has testified before Congress about the joint-employer issue to help define entrepreneurism through franchise ownership. Her mission is to help protect the business model that has been instrumental to her and her team’s success.
“I will always contribute to supporting franchising and advocate for its effectiveness in creating jobs as it is the greatest generator of wealth creation there has ever been,” Kennedy says. “I would like to think my career has stood for giving young people the opportunity to achieve amazing results. I have been able to positively educate elected officials that franchisees are business leaders in their local communities. It is an honor to serve, and it is the least I can do to give back to something I have been a part of my whole career.”
PERSONAL
First job: A waitress at Pizza Hut when I was 20 years old.
Formative influences/events: My father was an independent truck driver. I grew up in the cab of a semi, traveling the country and learning about the food supply chain from the fields to the port terminals as we hauled produce coast to coast. I learned about food cost management while at Pizza Hut. Exact ingredient portions were key to guest experience and, thus, the tips I earned.
Key accomplishments: Working my way from secretary for the owner of the business to becoming the franchisee when I bought his business. I have been engaged for several years at the IFA as a board member and past chair of the Franchisee Forum. I testified before Congress on the joint-employer issue, and I was deeply honored to receive the Bonny LeVine Award from the IFA in 2024.
Biggest current challenge: Staying on top of all the current technology and how to maximize those assets in our daily operations.
Next big goal: Finish remodeling our units and turn our focus more clearly to local market engagement.
First turning point in your career: Stepping out from the administrative role and learning daily operations at one of our locations before I was able to buy the stores. It was a life-changing experience to learn the hard and important work from the night crew.
Best business decision: Focusing on retaining and rewarding our store managers. They are the reason for any success we have, and they build incredible teams.
Hardest lesson learned: I built four franchised units with a different brand in 2004 and then closed them during the recession in 2008. It was the wrong brand and the wrong approach to growth.
Work week: Unless I am on vacation, I work seven days a week, and I usually get more done at night.
Exercise/workout: I swim on a near-daily basis.
Best advice you ever got: My former boss, whom I later purchased the franchise restaurants from, said, “Hope for the best, plan for the worst,” and “Surround yourself with experts in fields that you are not.” It was helpful to have good accountants and attorneys who know the ins and outs of the business.
What’s your passion in business? Providing a great workplace for employees on their first job and setting them up with skills to take with them to any career they pursue.
How do you balance life and work? I tend to schedule all my work from small tasks to large projects and don’t move work to the next day. I work the daily list, but I also schedule personal time and tasks so that I can give respect to both pieces of any day.
Guilty pleasure: Watching “Project Runway” and “American Idol.”
Favorite book: The Deming Management Method by Mary Walton.
Favorite movie: “The Wizard of Oz.”
What do most people not know about you? I can drive almost anything: semi-trailer trucks, farm tractors, and motorcycles.
Pet peeve: People who chew with their mouths open.
What did you want to be when you grew up? An attorney.
Last vacation: St. John with my son and his family in the summer of 2025.
Person you’d most like to have lunch with: President Donald Trump.
MANAGEMENT
Business philosophy: Results through spirited competition and benchmarking against the best of the best. We strive to be number one in all results and cheer each other on through every obstacle and win.
Management method or style: Teaching and always providing the why with the how.
Greatest challenge: Convincing our team that the brand’s decisions and protocols are what we follow even when we disagree.
How do others describe you? Focused, helpful, caring, and collaborative.
Have you ever been in a mentor-mentee relationship? What did you learn? Yes, as a mentor. I learned that not every experience or piece of advice can be directly translated. There must be a commitment to listening to learn for both parties.
One thing you’re looking to do better: Celebrate more of our team members’ accomplishments. They truly bring the magic.
How do you give your team room to innovate and experiment? We are always searching for solutions to issues. Anyone can bring their ideas and freely share them, and we often ask for volunteers to try something new that could benefit everyone.
How close are you to operations? Not as close as I could be. I visit stores monthly and also have district managers who are on top of the day-to-day operations in the stores.
What are the two most important things you rely on from your franchisor? Menu and marketing. The more of each, the better. We want to be able to offer food that is relevant to today’s consumer while being profitable for the operator. From a marketing perspective, it is important for the franchisor to establish our brand’s DNA through things like our creative, colors, and font. We need to tell customers who we are.
What you need from vendors: The timely, accurate deliveries of goods and services.
Have you changed your marketing strategy in response to the economy? How? Yes. We have leaned into some discounting through the loyalty app as well as menu offerings at lower prices to promote on a trial basis.
How is social media affecting your business? It has broadened our appeal to those who don’t know us and opened our brand up to a younger guest. Sadly, when there is a negative event, our opportunity to make it right for one guest manifests as an open issue to the masses, so we have less control over mistake resolution.
In what ways are you using technology (like AI) to manage your business? As a brand, Taco John’s has recently introduced automated drive-
thru guest interaction, and we are beginning to roll it out as an option for each restaurant. Within our stores, we are using AI to analyze data to collect results, and we use that to create data points for training and operations.
How do you hire and fire? We use interview questions designed to find alignment with our core values, which are more important to us than skills in our evaluation. We are slow to fire, believing that counseling and impactful conversations often solve issues before they become a last-chance scenario.
How do you train and retain? Training is an everyday event. There is always something to teach. New employees go through our “First Day Our Way” training to fully understand their role as a member of the team they are joining. Again, skills come second to behaviors for us.
How do you deal with problem employees? Every chance is given to them to improve. We document, we coach, and we wish them well if we have to part ways.
Fastest way into your doghouse: Lying, cheating, or stealing. Everything else is given grace.
BOTTOM LINE
Annual revenue: $6 million.
Goals over the next year: To move third-party delivery to 15% of our overall revenue and grow the loyalty app base across all our stores.
Growth meter: How do you measure your growth? Guest count, revenue, average ticket, and speed of service.
Vision meter: Where do you want to be in five years? 10 years? I’ll likely have less to do with the day-to-day operations in five years. I will hand over the torch to some great leaders who are already clearing the path for me.
Do you have brands in different segments? Why/why not? One iconic brand to focus on has been my mission from the beginning.
How is the economy in your region(s) affecting you, your employees, your customers? Our guests have less to spend, which means we must overdeliver when they choose us for a meal. As a company, we have thrown our profits into remodels, which cost more to complete than even two years ago. It’s a tough time for everyone, but we are committed to focusing on controlling those costs we can and not skimping in areas where it makes a difference.
Are you experiencing economic growth in your market? 2024 and 2025 to date are flat or slightly lower. Growth has been elusive, but we are seeing some uptick in the start of the second half of the year.
How do changes in the economy affect the way you do business? The labor market certainly has been a challenge post-Covid. Our team brilliantly does more with fewer on the floor, and they have adapted to some time-saving processes our brand has brought to operations.
How do you forecast for your business? I read tirelessly, focusing on global economic issues and even politics that can affect our future. Commodities play a huge role in our cost modeling. We also look closely at our competitors and track QSR trends.
What are the best sources for capital expansion? Profit. I don’t like to borrow.
Experience with private equity, local banks, national banks, other institutions? Why/why not? Banks act as our cash depositories only.
What are you doing to take care of your employees? We offer a competitive pay and benefits package to everyone. We find ways to reward excellence and focus on flexibility with scheduling where we can. Our managers focus on a team environment so that everyone thrives, no matter their tenure, their background, or their position on the floor.
How are you handling rising employee costs (payroll, minimum wage, healthcare, etc.)? It’s a challenge—no doubt. We see these costs as necessary, but they do chew away at profit, so we have less to reinvest in the stores for other things.
What laws and regulations are affecting your business, and how are you dealing with them? While we comply with all regulations, we don’t enjoy those that have been imposed as a blanket panacea for perceived workplace issues, like sick time and mandatory PTO. These programs serve as entitlements that chip away at our foundational belief that you earn benefits through performance and not because the state declares us all as equally deserving because we are employees.
How do you reward/recognize top-performing employees? We have a program focused on controlling costs, delivering guest experience scores, and reaching sales goals. Employees are recognized and rewarded when those goals are met. Our individual restaurants recognize their employees during birthdays and anniversaries and have funds for store parties and gift cards.
What kind of exit strategy do you have in place? Well, that’s a work in progress for sure! It is a family-run business. My son oversees the daily operations, and my sister is the office manager. We will look at our options and plan our future together.