The secret sauce behind the Chili’s comeback

You probably have a Chili’s memory, whether that’s a first date, a birthday dinner, a Triple Dipper shared during the big game. So when viral cheese pulls and TikTok secret-menu hacks made Chili’s look like an overnight sensation, it wasn’t. Years of unglamorous work sat underneath the sizzle, plus a comms team making sure 70,000+ team members knew not just what was changing, but why.

That same trust moved comms from the last stop before “send” to strategic advisors in the room from day one. The secret: relationships built long before you need them. Know your partners across ops, finance, supply chain, L&D, and marketing, and when a trend hits overnight, everyone’s already rowing together. It shows up in small, human calls too: skipping the dinner rush, flagging when a launch collides with a holiday, remembering the reader has probably already served 45 guests today.

It all adds up to a culture you can measure two ways. In awards (Brinker was named the #1 Top Workplace by the Dallas Morning News, voted by its own people), in tenure (a 45-year server in Plano), and executives who started as bartenders, a CFO who began behind the bar. The team feels it in moments, too. Recognition read aloud, a newsletter people actually open (sent through Workshop), and a family fund that’s supported over a million team members through hard days, all happening quietly behind the scenes. This one’s for the storytellers who made “welcome to Chili’s” feel true, from the inside out!