Our Story

“To whom much is given, much will be required.
Use your personal success as a platform to make the world a better place.”

One evening, a few weeks before we opened Rick’s Chophouse, I wrote those two sentences on a piece of my fancy new company stationery and hung them inside the cabinet door in my bathroom where I would see them every day. That was in early April 2007, and I have probably read that piece of paper thousands of times over the years. Those two statements sum up my philosophy of how to run our company. We decided that we would not just market our company in the traditional ways done by most; we were going to become good stewards of our community, and the best way to do that would be to become deeply involved in our schools, our churches, and our nonprofits, working and raising money for causes that would strengthen the bonds within our corner of the world.

In 2014, my wife Robbin left her 25 year career in the C-suites and we bought our first Goddard School. We built our second school in 2019. Robbin and the teams at our schools have built an incredible program over the years. Educating our children is the future, and the most important thing we will ever do. Purchasing the Grand Hotel from my long-time partner and mentor Don Day in the spring of 2021 was a dream come true for Robbin and me. The opportunity to give visitors the true McKinney experience will allow our company and town to serve as a model for others, to take our spirit of community and sustainability back to their own corners of the world.

Through the years, we have stayed true to that philosophy. After Rick’s, we built Sauce, everyone’s favorite Italian place (people ask me for recipes to this day), then added Grotto, my rock and roll mid-life crisis, then chose to close them both to create Harvest. I like to say Rick’s has my name, but Harvest has my soul. If you spend a dollar locally, 70 cents stays within your community; that was the founding principle behind Harvest and the creation of the Seed Project Foundation. As we began to learn and embrace regenerative, organic agriculture, we broke ground on Water Boy Farms.

I hope you’ll join us to learn, eat, stay, grow, and give in one of the greatest communities in Texas. See you Downtown -