Food & Spirits Magazine #15 | Page 29

I sat down with one local creative mini-Steve Jobs, by the name of Greg Cutchall who is the founder and CEO of Cutchall Management Company. By placing Steve and Greg in the same sentence, you can tell that Greg as a national franchisee and restaurant management consultant is a business innovator. “Big Cheese is a dual concept restaurant which will share space with Cutchall’s gourmet burger shop, Burger Star.” From Greg’s start as a wanna-be photography artist to food business maven, it may seem like an abandonment of creativity. The assumption that to be corporate is to abandon creativity in this case is so wrong. Cutchall has come a long way: “From picking up trash in the neighborhood at my father’s South Omaha A&W at the age of 8 to developing or acquiring over 80 restaurants in 7 states ... under a dozen brand names, I’ve seen it all.” His animated, positive energy must have radiated outward to the some 1400 colleagues and employees that he calls his team because his company is now the 43rd largest employer in the metro area and someone who has seen Omaha dining go through huge changes. “The biggest change I’ve seen in the restaurant and catering business is that, since the year 2000, the number of restaurants in the Omaha area has increased by 1,000 %, while the population has only slightly increased. The good news is that those people are eating out more often,” Greg said. Cutchall Management has succeeded when so many others in the restaurant business have clearly not. Presently he is launching three new ventures in Phoenix, AZ: Salty Señorita, Union Barrelhouse and Lola’s Coffee House. In the Omaha Area, his new restaurants include First Watch, Burger Star, Big Cheese, and he’ll offer consulting expertise for PIEOCRACY. The latter three will be fsmomaha.com A burger and fries at Burger Star 29