ArchiveFM

Duration
48m
Broadcast on
21 Aug 2026
Audio Format
other

Garrett Reed spent years helping grow Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts, and Corner Bakery before developing 200+ restaurant locations across 37 states. So when he decided to take Layne's Chicken Fingers — a Texas A&M cult favorite with a fiercely loyal following — and turn it into a national brand, he wasn't guessing. He had a blueprint.

This week we're getting into the strategy behind one of the most exciting chicken concepts in the country, what smart expansion actually looks like, and why Layne's is just getting started.

You won't want to miss this.

Layne's Chicken Fingers

Hey Denver! The Wayfair Store's grand opening weekend starts November 20th. Come shop, celebrate, and save with up to 80% off in store all weekend long. Plus, the first hundred customers in line each day get a free $50 gift card. Bring the whole family for giveaways, music, entertainment, and surprises. So mark your calendar and head to the Wayfair Store at avenues at Northfield November 20th through 22nd for our grand opening celebration. Wayfair, every style, every home. When your workday is constantly disrupted, your workflow isn't flowing. It's come to a grinding halt. You don't need an assistant. You need superpowers. Superhuman Go from the makers of Grammarly is built for how you actually work. No new tabs, no switching apps, no losing your place. Go handles busy work like finding documents or summarizing email threads. So you can focus on the work only you can do. Try Superhuman Go from the makers of Grammarly. Find out more at superhuman.com. Welcome back to Breaking Brand, a podcast at the intersection of retail and entrepreneurship, where your co-host Delaney and Bradley Roach. Today we're sitting down with someone who I think we can safely say is a QSR industry legend. Garrett Reed, he's worked with brands like Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts, and Corner Bakery. He then went on to start his own real estate company, and then he took all of that expertise and applied it to a Texas cult favorite that we all know and love, Lanes, chicken fingers. Today we're going to be talking growth, chicken, franchising, real estate, and everything in between. Garrett, thank you so much for being here today. Absolutely. I'm looking forward to the conversation. I don't know if all that's true. Some other stuff in there, but I will go with it. It's true and more, right? You've done a lot more than just that. Again, you're written blush, but okay. Yeah, and as a Texas girl now for 15 years, I'm from California originally, but very familiar with the brand, and it's been so exciting to kind of watch you guys grow and take over DFW and beyond. So I'm personally excited for this conversation. Cool. I mean too, this will be fun. So before we get into Lanes and everything you've done with that company, I want to go back a little bit in your career because you had a full career before you were even involved in Lanes. I did, yeah. You studied finance, you worked in house for real estate brands in various roles, such as Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts, and others. Can you kind of walk us through the progression leading up to Lanes? What were your roles at these various companies, and how did you even get into real estate? Yeah, so it's a story. I don't know if it's a cool story. I'll say cool story. To me, it's cool. So I grew up in College Station, Texas, which is where Texas A&M is, and my family actually moved to the DFW area my senior year of high school. So came up here my senior year, ended up enjoying the Metroplex, didn't really want to go back to the small town. So I ended up going to the University of North Texas and didn't know what I wanted to do, had no idea. I thought finance, if you learn how to do finance, you can do anything in business. So I started studying finance and I bumped into a professor. His name was Dr. John Bain. He since passed, but he became somewhat of a mentor of mine. He was a real estate professor, and he kind of took me under his wing. We got to be hard and fast friends, and in having conversations in his office, actually one night after school, he was talking about how people have the job. I think he was talking about Jack in the box specifically. I think he knew somebody at Jack in the box where their sole purpose was to analyze real estate, do the financial analysis of the development and all the intricacies that went to it. And I remember thinking, that sounds like the coolest job in the world. Like they're going to pay you to do something like that. And I guess he saw the interest that I had in that. And he said, hey, I know some guys at Radio

Transcription truncated.