Sam Fox’s name is synonymous with excellence in the restaurant world. The acclaimed entrepreneur went from a college dropout to opening nearly 200 restaurants across the country over the past three decades. Having been nominated for more than a dozen James Beard Awards, Fox built and sold one of the country’s most admired culinary portfolios through Fox Restaurant Concepts (FRC), creating more than 20 brands like True Food Kitchen, The Henry, Flower Child, and North Italia.
He sold FRC to The Cheesecake Factory in October 2019 for $353 million, when the group had almost 50 restaurants across eight states. Since then, FRC has grown to 13 concepts with more than 100 locations nationwide, plus 52 North Italia locations.
Now, seven years after selling his company, Fox officially announced he was stepping away from FRC on Thursday. His last day was October 30. “It’s hard to sell your business and be partners with the people you sell your business to for this long,” he admits, adding that his departure was the result of a gradual, year-by-year transition rather than a fixed timetable set at the sale. As the business grew, the company built a transition team to manage its next stage, and he and the ownership discussed his timing over the past year.
Though the transition was planned and agreed upon years in advance, it marks an important milestone for the restaurateur and his career path as he turns his full attention to the luxury lifestyle hotel and independent restaurant realm. “The timing coincides with the success of the hotel and some of the growth I want to do outside of Fox Restaurants,” he notes. “We’re really excited for the future, for what’s ahead for FRC, and equally, if not even more excited for what our new organization is going to do.”
Fox created Author & Edit Hospitality in 2021 with the debut opening of The Twelve Thirty Club—a multi-level dining and entertainment destination inspired by the supper clubs of the Prohibition era—in partnership with celebrity Justin Timberlake in Nashville, Tennessee. He then created his first hotel, The Global Ambassador in Phoenix, in December 2023.
“Opening The Global Ambassador put me in a world I had never been in before. After spending my entire career in restaurants, suddenly I was a first-time hotelier, earning a MICHELIN Key in our first year and every year since. And I loved it,” Fox notes. “It reminded me how much I still have to learn and how much more there is to create. In a lot of ways, I feel like I’m starting all over again, only this time with nearly 30 years of experience behind me. And that’s what makes it so exciting.”
His shift into the hotel side of hospitality stemmed from his past frustrating experience opening a restaurant inside a hotel, where third-party operators worked to operate the various parts from the restaurants to the valet and spa. “I looked around and everyone was working in different silos, and it was really draining and taxing on the guests and really not great for employees either. And I said, ‘This model is broken,’” he recalls. “The level of caring and the level of thoughtfulness that went into the employees and to the guests was diluted, and I didn’t want to be part of that anymore.”
That was the inspiration for Fox to set out to create his own hotel—one that he would create, develop, and operate independently to ensure cohesiveness and a better experience for all. “I’m not going to outsource that to a Marriott or a Hyatt or any of the other big companies. I was going to operate it as a truly independent hotel and own and operate everything within the four walls within the business. And I think that the guests can feel that,” he adds.
The Global Ambassador houses five distinct dining options, including Théa Mediterranean Rooftop overlooking Camelback Mountain, Le Âme, a Parisian steakhouse and bistro; Pink Dolphin, a poolside Mexican and Peruvian restaurant and bar; Le Market, a French-inspired bakery and cafe; and Lobby Bar, an intimate cocktail lounge with live weekend jazz.
Fox points to the five-star hotel Montage Laguna Beach, where his family spent nearly 10 summers, as a major influence when first designing the vision for The Global Ambassador. He was also inspired by long-established, family-owned European hotels in vacation destinations—examples that helped shape his ambition to create a distinctive independent hotel.
One of the biggest challenges at first, Fox shares, was getting his hotel team to adopt a restaurateur’s focus on efficiency. He estimates hotel rooms can generate 70 to 75 cents in profit per revenue dollar, compared with roughly 20 cents for restaurants—a gap that helps explain why hotels often outsource dining. But Fox chose a more labor-intensive approach. “We made it hard on ourselves. We have more employees, less profit,” he says.
“Restaurant people are scrappier than hotel people, and to get my hotel people to think like restaurateurs has been a challenge,” Fox tells FSR, “but we’ve achieved that, and now the building is humming, and the margins are incredible.”
Looking to the future, Fox and Timberlake announced a Twelve Thirty Club coming to Austin, Texas, as well as a Théa Mediterranean Rooftop in Dallas, both slated to open in 2027. He also hinted at replicating the model for The Global Ambassador in other markets around the country, as well as developing a smaller “sibling” hotel brand in Phoenix, all yet to be formally announced.
Thematically, Author & Edit reflects Fox’s process of authoring a concept from the ground up, then editing it continuously as it evolves by responding to guests and employees. “I think the magic happens in the editing,” Fox says.
“I don’t think people really understand how difficult it is to take an idea in your head, put that idea on paper, then go execute that plan,” he says, “from the development side to the financing to the structure of the financing to putting together budgets, and then putting together all these ideas from nothing, and then hiring the team … and being able to do all of that from zero scratch, and then have the success we have.”
