F&P Group

02/09/2026

A special thank you to the incredible team who worked concessions at this past game! 🧡🏈

From the early prep to keeping everything running throughout the game, you all did an amazing job. We appreciate the hard work, energy, and dedication you brought to game day!

Couldn’t have done it without you! 👏🧡

26/08/2026

One of our Brownsville store managers, shared this with us last week:

“We created a DT Bingo — 80% of my team consists of new hires, trying to make training fun.” 🎉

We love seeing our teams find fun ways to make training more engaging. Turning everyday goals into a little friendly competition makes a difference!

Shoutout to Nancy and her team in Brownsville! 💛🍦

&PBrands

05/08/2026

Miracle Treat Day 2026 is in the books, and I wanted to share where we landed.

Across our Dairy Queen locations, our community bought 7,886 Blizzards this Miracle Treat Day, adding up to $38,360.04 in sales for the day. That puts roughly $19,180 toward Driscoll Children's Hospital, the local Children's Miracle Network hospital so many of our South Texas families rely on.

I won't pretend that number matches last year's. It doesn't, and I'd rather just say that plainly than dress it up. But every one of those 7,886 Blizzards is still someone who chose to spend part of their day helping a kid they'll never meet. That's the whole point of this day, and it doesn't stop being true just because the number moved.

To everyone who stopped by a DQ for Miracle Treat Day, and to every team member who worked a longer, busier shift to make it happen: thank you! Driscoll Children's Hospital does real work for real families across South Texas, and today, all of you helped fund a piece of that.

Same time next year. Let's create even more miracles!

04/08/2026

Yum Brands just sold Pizza Hut for $2.7 billion, split between a private equity firm and Yum China. If you're under 30, that headline probably means nothing to you. If you grew up in the 80s or 90s like I did, it hits different.

Pizza Hut was king back then. Not "a pizza place," THE pizza place. The red roof. The Tiffany-style stained glass lamps hanging low over the tables. The checkered tablecloths. The buffet.

Bigfoot Pizza showed up in '93 looking like a pizza built for a family of giants.
Book It! got an entire generation of kids reading for personal pan pizzas.

And for one summer when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles went on an concert tour sponsored by Pizza Hut. That's not a normal thing a pizza company does. That's a company that owned culture, not just a space in the market.

So yeah, it's rough seeing it end up here. Sold off, shrinking, closing hundreds of stores, losing sales quarter after quarter for years.

But there's always a reason, and this one isn't complicated. Pizza Hut kept the nostalgia and let everything else fall behind. While competitors built real apps, real loyalty programs, and real delivery infrastructure, Pizza Hut leaned on price cuts and the brand name to do the work. Cutting prices without the tech and momentum behind it doesn't win customers back, it just shrinks your margins while you lose them anyway.

That's the part worth sitting with if you run restaurants for a living. Nostalgia gets people in the door once. It's the boring stuff, the ordering experience, the loyalty program, the operations, that decides whether they come back. Pizza Hut had the best brand in the pizza business for twenty years and still lost it.

That should scare every operator, including us.

Check out more of our takes on Pillar Mindset: pillarmindset.com

03/08/2026

I've watched people pour years into a restaurant. Dealing with supplier problems at 6 a.m., hires that don't work out, and slow weeks that make you question everything you've built. Entrepreneurship isn't a personality trait you pick up from a podcast. It's a grind most people never see, and it changes you.

For a long time, I thought that was the only path. Build something or play it safe.

I don't believe that anymore.

Some people are wired for risk, uncertainty, and sleepless nights. Most of us probably aren't, and I don't think that's a failure. We need great operators, builders, leaders, teachers, artists, and employees just as much as we need founders.

Success isn't about owning a business. It's about finding the kind of work that fits who you are—and doing it well.

Who are you? Are you the one who builds the brand, or the one who makes it run? So curious to see where people land on this.

For more hot takes and opinion pieces check out Pillar Mindset: pillarmindset.com

30/07/2026

I've been around the F&P Brands and Dairy Queen world since 2018, and Miracle Treat Day has never felt like a normal Thursday to me.

It's a weird comparison, but it's the closest one I've got. It feels a little like Christmas. Not the presents, the other part. The part where a whole community comes together to be a bit more generous for one day, for kids they'll never meet. You watch people order Blizzards knowing part of it is going somewhere that matters, and there's something genuinely sweet about being a part of that.

Since 1984, DQ and Children's Miracle Network Hospitals have raised more than $180 million together. Every Blizzard sold today, with part of the proceeds going to the charity, adds to that growing number.

There's a quieter feeling underneath it too. Miracle Treat Day sorta feels like the unofficial end of summer to me. School's about to start back up, the big holidays aren't far off, and this is kind of the last eating ice cream in a parking-lot moment before all of that kicks in. You get me?

If there's a DQ near you today, go grab a Blizzard.

It’s a small treat, but makes a big difference for a kid at our local Driscoll Children's Hospital.

28/07/2026

This Thursday, July 30, is Miracle Treat Day!

For as long as we've been serving burgers and baskets across the Rio Grande Valley, the F&P Group has stood behind Children's Miracle Network Hospitals, and our DQ restaurants have stood behind Driscoll Children's Hospital. It's a relationship we've been proud to grow year after year, because Driscoll is where so many of our own neighbors, employees, and families turn to when their kids need care close to home.

Here's how it works: every Blizzard Treat sold at participating F&P Group Dairy Queen locations on July 30 sends a donation straight to Children's Miracle Network Hospitals, supporting Driscoll Children's Hospital right here in South Texas. No extra steps, no separate donation — just order your favorite Blizzard, and you're creating a miracle.

Kids' health shouldn't depend on distance from a hospital. Miracle Treat Day is a small, sweet way our community helps make sure that's true for the kids Driscoll cares for every day.

Stop by any F&P Group Dairy Queen this Thursday. Grab a Blizzard and become a Miracle Maker!

27/07/2026

Our 23rd Street Dairy Queen in McAllen just took first place nationally for speed of service — Dairy Queen's Fast Lanes & Lemonade Gains competition. Fast service, happy customers, and a proud team. Congrats to our 23rd Street crew!

# 956

23/07/2026

Dairy Queen is starting rolling out AI voice ordering to drive-thrus nationwide in partnership with Presto. This new tech now handles roughly 90% of orders accurately across dozens of franchise locations, with a goal of reaching all 3,000 U.S. and Canadian restaurants

For F&P Brands, this is the same balance we navigate daily across our Dairy Queen locations: using technology to speed up the line and improve accuracy without losing the hospitality that makes a restaurant run feel like a real human operation.

The data says AI gets the order right. Fans say they want a person on the other end of that speaker.

The winning model is probably both. Technology handling the routine, people handling the moment.

What do you think is the right way forward?

21/07/2026

"I built our 40-year-old restaurant group a brain 🧠

3 months ago I couldn't code. Now I ask our business questions out loud and it answers — with our own data.

We started by putting Claude into ten leaders' daily work. Small moves, big confidence.

Then we rebuilt everything:
📊 A drive-thru leaderboard built in 2 hours
🏦 One-click bank transfers saving 6+ hrs/week
✅ Daily audits catching every penny, every fee

Now it all lives in one system — the Mainframe — feeding a bigger system we call the Brain: 230M+ lines of data, listening, learning, even drafting project plans from things I say in meetings.

This isn't about replacing people. It's about giving them their time back to think.

Cash → credit cards. Ledgers → spreadsheets. Now labor → thought.

If your business could talk... what would you ask it?"

Read the rest here:

Since 1987, F&P Group has been a staple of South Texas hospitality across F&P Brands, F&P Media, and F&P Development.