Alan and Eddie Gant aren't new to running a restaurant in North Mississippi, they just signed up to run two more. The brothers have put their names on two fresh Zaxbys franchise agreements, one for Winona, one for Kosciusko, adding to a state that already counts 40 Zaxbys locations. Winona is up first, expected to open sometime within the next year. Kosciusko follows roughly a year behind it, and the specific spot in town hasn't been picked yet.
There's a reason Zaxbys didn't need to take a leap of faith on this pair. Both Gants went to Mississippi State, and both built careers well outside the restaurant world before circling back to it, Alan through more than twenty years in commercial and consumer lending plus bank management, Eddie through a comparable run in real estate investment and commercial lending. What actually matters to a franchisor evaluating new operators, though, is that they're already running two full-service restaurants in the region right now. That's not a resume line, that's proof.
Russ Holland, who oversees development for Zaxbys, said as much when explaining the deal: the brothers check every box the company looks for in a new operator, deep community roots, real business experience, and a demonstrated ability to actually run a restaurant well rather than just fund one.
Alan Gant's own framing of the deal skipped the business-expansion language entirely. He talked about it as an extension of work he and his brother have already been doing for years, investing in the towns they grew up around, and said the plan for both new locations is to make them feel like places people actually want to gather, not just another fast-food stop off the highway.
None of that changes the operational reality of running a two-town, two-year buildout at the same time. Gorilla Dash offers a Recruitment feature built for exactly that kind of juggling act, giving franchise brands a way to keep every in-progress agreement organized as a system like Zaxbys works through several markets at once.
