Chris Cheek is a franchise, operations, and restaurant development veteran with over 20 years of experience in the industry. In June of 2025, he returned to Newk’s Eatery in the role of Chief Development Officer. In September of 2024, he helped lead his third successful brand exit with the sale of Modern Market Eatery.
From April of 2022 to September 2024, he served as Chief Development Officer of Modern Restaurant
Concepts. At over eight hundred units in total, Modern Restaurant Concepts was the parent company of
Modern Market Eatery and Qdoba. In his role, he focused on the Modern Market Eatery brand, which grew from twenty-seven units to thirty-six in just under 2 years. He signed the first franchisee in the history of Modern Market Eatery. Thrive Restaurant Group is the fourth largest Applebee’s franchisee and committed to 41 new units with Modern Market Eatery. In late 2022, he assisted with the acquisition of Qdoba from
Apollo Global Management with Modern Restaurant Concepts’ private equity sponsor, Butterfly Capital.
In his previous role, he was Chief Development Officer of publicly traded FAT Brands. FAT Brands is a global restaurant franchising company that acquires markets, and develops fast-casual, quick-service, casual dining, and polished casual dining concepts around the world. The Company currently owns 17 restaurant brands and franchises over 2,300 units worldwide. Prior to FAT Brands, Chris was Chief Development Officer of Global Franchise Group headquartered in Atlanta.
Following this morning’s Drive-Thru Report reveal, we’ll go deeper into the technologies and innovations separating winning brands, and what it means to run the modern QSR drive-thru that delivers consistency, experience, and somewhat beyond expectation.
