Sam Fox Exits His 100-Unit Restaurant Group to Build Hotel Brand

Sam Fox, founder of the nearly 100-unit Fox Restaurant Concepts, steps away from his company at the end of the year to launch a hotel-centric hospitality group called Author & Edit.

The exit closes a seven-year ownership arc. Fox sold the group to The Cheesecake Factory in 2018 and stayed on as CEO under new ownership. From now on, Fox Restaurant Concepts will be entirely owned and operated by The Cheesecake Factory, keeping brands like Culinary Dropout, Wild Flower, Dough Bird and Olive & Ivy in the casual-dining giant's portfolio.

Fox frames the split as a handoff to a buyer that's performing. "Cheesecake Factory's market cap is as big as it's ever been and obviously the stores are doing well," he told Nation's Restaurant News. "To have a business that's as old as it is, and to have the comp sales they have is pretty incredible."

He added that integration is already underway. "We've been having some of their team integrate with some of our Fox team as well. I think they're set up for a big future and a lot of success."

What does the change mean for the Fox brands?

For diners and operators, not much visible disruption. The concepts stay in place under full Cheesecake Factory ownership, which has spent seven years absorbing them. The real shift is where Fox himself puts his capital and attention: hotels rather than restaurants.

Author & Edit's flagship is The Global Ambassador, a Phoenix hotel that opened in December 2023 with co-investment from NBA star Devin Booker. It runs 141 rooms and six restaurants under one roof. Nashville's Twelve Thirty Club — a Prohibition-era-themed supper club co-owned by Justin Timberlake — also joins the new group.

The development pipeline is concrete:

• A second Twelve Thirty Club opens in Austin next September.
• More Global Ambassador hotels are planned.
• An Au Cheval outpost lands in Nashville in November.
• Théa Mediterranean Rooftop, currently perched on The Global Ambassador, opens as a stand-alone restaurant in Dallas in early 2027.

In the near term, Author & Edit will concentrate development on Nashville and Phoenix, with additional markets and concepts to be announced.

Why restaurants to hotels?

Fox says the mechanics of hospitality transfer, with one big difference in the guest relationship. "We've taken [all of what we learned] from years of running great restaurants and will be applying that to hotels," he said. "You have people staying with you for 24 hours instead of two hours for dinner, so there's a longer window for us to provide amazing hospitality to our guests."

The business model is also changing. Rather than building a conventional multi-unit restaurant group, Author & Edit will work through partnerships.

"We're going to do a little bit differently at Author & Edit," Fox said. "We're going to partner with people, invest in people, and mentor people. I'm at a different point in my career, and able to have the luxury of being able to do whatever I want to do."

He describes the posture as two-way: "I'm able to learn from some smart people and hopefully they're learning from us. We're looking forward to these partnerships."

The first test comes quickly, with the Nashville Au Cheval opening in November and the Austin supper club following next fall — both benchmarks for whether a restaurant operator's playbook can scale into full-service lodging.