Chris and Harris Pappas Let Diners Land Helicopters at Pappas Bros. Until the FAA Found Out
Observer ·
Chris and Harris Pappas run more than 80 restaurants across eight states, and their CEO started as a college waiter. The 2026 Nightlife & Dining Power List honorees talk about putting the family name on the door and the Dallas steakhouse guests started flying to.
Chris and Harris Pappas run more than 80 restaurants across eight states, from the 24-hour Dot Coffee Shop to Pappas Bros. Steakhouse. Pappas Restaurants also has more than 200 in-house service workers, from electricians and truck drivers to equipment-repair specialists. The brothers say 80 percent of its leaders started in hourly jobs and that average employee tenure is 5.4 years.
This year, the brothers launched Pappas Restaurant Weeks across 10 concepts, raising $1 million for 16 local food banks. In June, about a year after buying the Tex-Mex chain On The Border out of bankruptcy, they closed its nearly 30 company-owned restaurants , and the chain filed for Chapter 7 liquidation a week later. Its five U.S. franchised locations stayed open.
Chris and Harris Pappas are 2026 Observer Nightlife & Dining Power List honorees. They spoke with Observer about employees who spent decades climbing through the company and the helicopter landings that eventually attracted the FAA.
Chris Pappas : When we opened our first seafood restaurant, our dad asked us, “Why don’t you use your own name?” The lesson behind it was pretty clear: Once you put your family name on the door, you have to stand behind what happens inside. We carried that with us as we opened Pappas Seafood House , Pappadeaux, Pappasito’s, Pappas Bar-B-Q , Pappas Burger and Pappas Bros. Steakhouse. The name became more than a name. It was our promise to care for our guests, deliver a memorable experience, and, when something wasn’t right, make it right. That’s still how we run the business to this day.
Harris Pappas: We have been blessed to have so many amazing team members come through our doors, and my brother and I are honored to have worked with them. The one that stands out is Caroline Prebble . She just celebrated her 55th year at Pappas. She started at our Dot Coffee Shop, and we worked side by side for many years. Her hard work, along with that of many others, allowed us to grow the business.
Chris: I would say, Mike Rizzo. He started with us in the ’90s as a college waiter. He says he started out just wanting some extra cash to be able to take his girlfriend out on dates. I’d say it worked out; he eventually married her and is now the CEO of Pappas Restaurants.
Harris: When your dishwasher breaks at the beginning of a shift on a Saturday night, you want it back up and running fast. When the A/C goes out in August in Texas, there isn’t time to wait for a third-party crew to come to the rescue.
Our service team is faster, better and truly cares about the work they do. By getting our equipment working faster, we open our doors faster and can keep providing our guests with the high-quality experience they expect when they dine with us.
Harris: We have a 24-hour diner and one of the best steakhouses in the world. We can cook pancakes and prime bone-in ribeye.
Each concept learns from the others, and many of our team members have worked across multiple concepts. From learning to grill at Pappadeaux, working the impinger at Pappasito’s, monitoring the pits at Pappas Bar-B-Q and butchering our own steaks in-house at Pappas Bros., each of these skills translates from brand to brand and makes us stronger as a whole.
But what is one thing the company has learned from Pappas Bros., specifically? Probably how to butcher well. The butchering skills our team has finessed at Pappas Bros. have played an essential part in educating the entire company. We now have skilled butchers in most locations, so we can serve the best-quality cuts possible.
Chris: When we opened Pappas Bros. in Dallas, we had some extra land next door. One of these wealthy North Dallas guys was trying to impress his fiancée, and apparently driving to dinner wasn’t impressive enough. So he took the helicopter from his ranch, flew it over and landed right next to the restaurant.
We thought, “Sure, why not?” Well, then other people saw him do it and decided they wanted to do the same thing. Before long, people startt flying in semi-regularly for dinner.
And then the FAA found out. That was the end of that.
Chris: My daughter and her husband, and their partner Cherif, just opened their fifth restaurant in the greater Houston area. Bludorn Restaurant is their flagship location and a great example of fine dining.
They are building a fine restaurant group that would hold up to any critic. We are all pretty proud of them.