Fogo de Chão posted 13% sales growth in 2025 while the top 500 chains collectively slowed to 3%, according to Technomic data. The Brazilian steakhouse chain finished its fifth consecutive year of 15% year-over-year systemwide revenue growth, recorded a record year of openings, debuted in Asia, and is preparing to enter Chile.

CEO Barry McGowan is targeting $1 billion in systemwide revenue within the next two to three years, up from $736 million at the end of 2025.

McGowan laid out the growth strategy last week at the Restaurantology event in Salt Lake City, Utah, hosted by Savory Fund, and anchored it in labor strategy rather than menu or real estate. The company operates with three years of human capital visibility and two years of site visibility — it deliberately avoids locking in locations before it has the people to staff them.

"You cannot grow ahead of it. If you do, then you're going to dilute your culture pretty quickly," McGowan said. "These are the people who have been cultivated, who know our language and who we are. They're ready for the next level."

Fogo employs more than 10,000 team members globally. McGowan calls the business "human capital-led" and said the chain's hiring mission is explicit: "Our mission is hiring people that other people won't hire."

A first paycheck that set the trajectory

McGowan's operating philosophy traces back to a franchise owner-operator. Born in Germany, he moved to the United States and started working at 14 for his brother at a Pizza Hut, washing dishes and prepping. When he realized his brother wasn't paying him, he applied at the McDonald's across the street and collected his first paycheck.

The McDonald's owner-operator, Richard Dell, fed him before the job interview even began. "That operator understood who he was hiring, understood the community, the people he needed talent from," McGowan said. "Then all he did was train me, coach me, inspire me, and told me someday I can own my own McDonald's. I was very young at 16. I felt very confident I was going to be an operator, and that's why I stayed in the business."

McGowan built his career through back-of-house and operations roles at Chili's and Macaroni Grill before becoming president of Fogo de Chão in 2013. He added the CEO title in 2019.

That early experience now shapes how he scales a global brand. "You have to start the tip of the spear back, not from the executive team down, and you've got to have high visibility to your talent pool," he said. "Culture is that important and you've got to speak it, reaffirm it, you've got to show up every day and live it."

Founder-led, and betting on it

Fogo is a 47-year-old concept built around the gaucho technique of roasting meat slowly over an open fire pit. Brothers Arri and Jair Coser founded it in Porto Alegre, Brazil, with brothers Aleixo and Jorge Ongaratto, and the company remains founder-led — a distinction McGowan considers central to its performance.

"I realized after growing up with big brands is that they go away once the soul of the brand disappears, and that soul usually is the founder mentality, the people who started it, and the people who stayed," he said. "You've got to have a committed team that believes in the future."

The menu carries its own differentiators: butter-bathed lobster, blistered fish, and "salty bark" — a trademarked name for the intensely seasoned exterior crust that forms on fire-roasted meats.

On the technology side, Fogo recently launched Fogo Rewards and rolled out a digital concierge platform called Selma AI, named after Selma Oliveira, the brand's first U.S. general manager, whom McGowan calls "the matriarch."

McGowan frames the current moment as an industry "renaissance," with the winners being the companies that have the right people and culture in place. "Times are always tough, but how you respond to it, how you elevate the team, how you recover, learn from it — it's exciting to really scale your culture," he said. "Restaurants is the hardest business to do. You've got to work hard and then you've got to convince people every day — not just your customers, but your team members. What I love is when you do it right, you have real scalability."

With a record openings year behind it, new markets in Asia and Chile in motion, and a pipeline sequenced around people rather than sites, Fogo is positioning its culture infrastructure as the constraint — and the engine — on its path to $1 billion.