{"id":69570,"date":"2025-10-12T09:29:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T09:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/69570\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T09:29:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T09:29:08","slug":"this-millennial-went-from-being-a-builder-on-5-an-hour-to-launching-and-selling-wingstop-in-the-uk-for-532-million-with-no-restaurant-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/69570\/","title":{"rendered":"This millennial went from being a builder on $5 an hour to launching (and selling) Wingstop in the UK for $532 million\u2014with no restaurant experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Grogan<\/a>\u2019s first job paid him just \u00a330 ($40) a day lugging bricks and hauling cement on a Birmingham building site<\/a>. His latest payday? A \u00a3400 million ($532 million) takeover deal for the UK arm of Wingstop\u2014the American fried chicken chain with celebrity fans like Kylie Jenner\u2014that he cofounded with Herman Sahota and Saul Lewin.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s all thanks to a chance encounter that traces back to when he was just 18 and not sure what he really wanted to do with his life. Like many Gen Zers<\/a> today, the millennial decided to skip university<\/a> and try his hand at the trade industry when he turned 16 years old.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He had been working as a labourer on a building site for 2 years when he met a property developer. Like Grogan, he hadn\u2019t gone to university either and made his way from the bottom to the top, so he began to mentor the teenager.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou meet certain people in life that change the direction of it,\u201d Grogan exclusively told Fortune, adding that the mentorship led to an internship at Dragon Den (the UK equivalent of Shark Tank) star James Caan\u2019s private equity firm in central London.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I started to understand how deals were put together. I was surrounded by a number of entrepreneurs, and that really quickly drove my fire to do something more with my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat very quickly led me to wanting to leave the world of employment to start my own business in the world of residential development and property development,\u201d he added. \u201cAlong that journey, you have to meet lots of people, pitch for money. So I sort of understood the fundraising process and having worked within the world of private equity, I understood business plans and presentations.\u201d<\/p>\n

His real estate career set the stage for everything that followed, including meeting Sahota and Lewin\u2014the men who would eventually help him launch Wingstop UK. They met while working in real estate and property development, but they decided to chance their arm in fast food seven years ago.<\/p>\n

The trio saw the U.S. cult following and wanted to bring it to London. The problem? Nobody believed in them.<\/p>\n

It took one cold email and 50 no\u2019s before a $532 million yes<\/p>\n

Grogan first discovered Wingstop through a line in a Rick Ross track\u2014the Grammy-nominated rapper was a franchisee in the U.S. and heavily promoted the brand through his music. Wanting in, he tried his luck sending a cold email to the parent company in Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s really how we discovered Wingstop,\u201d Grogan says. \u201cWe Googled it, and back in September 2016, I sent a cold email to Wingstop HQ: \u2018Hey, you\u2019ve got no presence in Europe. We\u2019d love to launch the brand in the UK.\u2019 Honestly, my thought process was, I\u2019ll figure it out afterwards. It was a punt.\u201d<\/p>\n

To his surprise, the U.S. team replied positively, and Grogan\u2019s cofounders came on board to piece the deal together. \u201cWe managed to convince the US parent that one, we could raise the necessary capital, and two, we would assemble a team around us. Yes, we had no experience, but we had identified a market gap. No one in the UK food-and-beverage world was speaking authentically to younger consumers the way brands like Gymshark and Nando\u2019s were,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t have to worry about product or even food at first. We later learned just how tough operations are in a restaurant business, but being naive allowed us to jump headfirst into the challenge with no preconceptions. That was a gift.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But getting the go-ahead was just the first hurdle: What followed were months and months of rejection from 50 investors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThree young men with no experience in hospitality, ultimately trying to pitch a brand, that no one in Europe had really heard of at that time\u2014that\u2019s a huge red flag,\u201d Grogan continued. \u201cWe had a lot of setbacks\u2026We took a lot of no\u2019s and we had a lot of stops and starts, but by the skin of our teeth, we managed to pull it off.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of the largest fast-food brand takeovers in Britain<\/p>\n

In the end, it took nearly a year to get that yes. \u201cIf we\u2019d have stopped a week earlier, we wouldn\u2019t be sat here now,\u201d he said adding that each rejection was a lesson. \u201cUltimately, by the 50th presentation, a lot of the concerns that early investors had raised had either been figured out or we had an answer for.\u201d<\/p>\n

By then, they\u2019d managed to secure what is now the site for their flagship restaurant in London\u2019s West End. \u201cSo it made it a bit more real for those later investors that came to speak to us,\u201d Grogan adds. \u201cWe say amongst ourselves that the stars have aligned on this journey, and that was probably one of the first stars that did align for us.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

And the stars really did align for Grogan and the team. They built the UK Wingstop brand from scratch; following in the U.S. branches\u2019 targeting of Gen Z and millennial consumers, using social media and the celebrities of the moment. Today, there are 57 Wingstop sites in the UK.<\/p>\n

Nearly nine years after sending that first cold email, the trio sold a majority stake of Lemon Pepper Holdings (Wingtop UK\u2019s parent company) to Californian private equity firm Sixth Street just before the New Year. Already, it has plans to expand to 200 UK sites in the next five years<\/a>. The deal marked one of the largest takeovers of a restaurant brand in Britain.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And Grogan, a 35-year-old Brit with zero prior restaurant cashed in his share of a \u00a3400 million ($532 million) windfall.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on his meteoric rise from construction sites, Grogan tells the next generation of aspiring entrepreneurs that real-world experience\u2014not lectures\u2014shapes success.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnless you want to be a doctor or a lawyer, university is a waste of time. The experiences that you can have within the world of business, or with a mentor, or by becoming street smart are far more valuable than a textbook.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fortune Global Forum returns Oct. 26\u201327, 2025 in Riyadh. CEOs and global leaders will gather for a dynamic, invitation-only event shaping the future of business. Apply for an invitation.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom Grogan\u2019s first job paid him just \u00a330 ($40) a day lugging bricks and hauling cement on a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[114,26250,6373,49893,10325,2502,293,49894,11542,27625,85,46,10702,19428,25729,49895,49896],"class_list":["post-69570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-career-advice","tag-careers","tag-ceo-salaries-and-executive-compensation","tag-chief-executive-officer-ceo","tag-entrepreneurs","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-europe-ceo","tag-founders","tag-how-i-made-my-first-million","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-millennial","tag-millennials","tag-the-promotion-playbook","tag-tools-of-the-trade","tag-u-k-ceo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}