Latest news with #AlexEaton
Associated Press
18-06-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Aplos Announces the Launch of Its Third Location in Oxford, Marking a Milestone in Its 10-Year Growth Plan
06/17/2025, Jackson, Mississippi // PRODIGY: Feature Story // Aplós, the Mediterranean restaurant known for its fresh ingredients and strong community values, has announced the opening of its third location in Oxford, Mississippi, slated for late summer 2026. This new venue represents a pivotal step in the brand's growth, marking its first out-of-town expansion and the start of a 10-year vision to scale across the Southeastern United States. The Oxford location will be built outside the town square, a strategic move aimed at serving both the city's growing local population and the influx of students from nearby universities. Founder and executive chef Alex Eaton explains, 'Oxford is a vibrant college town, but its growth has outpaced the infrastructure around the square. We saw an opportunity to be part of the community where people live, study, and spend their weekends, not just where they party.' The decision to expand to Oxford was not made lightly. It followed careful planning, community engagement, and groundwork to ensure Aplós doesn't just arrive but truly belong to the community. Eaton has already met with local officials and planners to understand how Aplós can contribute meaningfully to the area. 'For me, it's not enough to have good food and a good-looking brand,' Eaton says. 'We want to be woven into the community fabric, partnering with schools, giving students work experience, and showing up where it matters.' This emphasis on local connection is part of what Eaton calls the 'recipe for the brand.' Inspired by his years working in the fine dining kitchens of New Orleans and his Lebanese heritage, Aplós combines Mediterranean simplicity with Southern hospitality. However, Eaton believes that a healthy business starts with people. 'Before we grow, we have to grow our executive team, our culture, our values,' he says. 'You can't build a restaurant in a new city if the foundation is not rock solid.' Oxford will be the third Aplós location, following successful openings in Jackson and Ridgeland, Mississippi. The new location will sit alongside key community spaces, a high school, a movie theater, and new student apartment beds, giving it direct access to a mix of families, students, and young professionals. 'This is not about replicating a chain,' Eaton says. 'Each location of Aplós should feel like its own thing. That's how we avoid becoming just another brand.' The long-term plan is ambitious. Eaton and his team are eyeing 10 Aplós locations in 10 years, with targeted growth in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and eventually Arkansas and Texas. 'We are focused on what I call 'community-centric development,'' says Eaton. 'If we are going to grow, it's got to be in places where we can be more than a restaurant. We need to be a job creator, a support system, a gathering spot.' As the brand expands, Aplós will continue to invest in business coaching, internal leadership development, and youth employment programs. The company already works with high schools and plans to collaborate with hospitality colleges to offer credit-earning internships. 'Growth is one of our core values,' says Eaton. 'If you're not growing, whether as a dishwasher or a regional manager, you are probably in the wrong place.' At its core, the Oxford expansion is a litmus test. 'Back home, people support us because they know me,' Eaton says. 'Oxford is different. People don't care who I am; they will judge us by our product, our team, and how we show up in their community. That's what makes this so real.' If all goes according to plan, the Oxford launch will be the start of something much bigger than just another restaurant. It will be the blueprint for how Aplós grows, with integrity, intentionality, and local roots firmly planted in every community it joins. Media Contact Name: Elizabeth Lanza Email: [email protected]
Yahoo
17-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Aplos Announces the Launch of Its Third Location in Oxford, Marking a Milestone in Its 10-Year Growth Plan
Aplós announces the opening of its third location in Oxford, Mississippi, its first out-of-town venue, marking the beginning of a regional expansion with plans for 10 locations over 10 years. Jackson, Mississippi, June 17, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aplós, the Mediterranean restaurant known for its fresh ingredients and strong community values, has announced the opening of its third location in Oxford, Mississippi, slated for late summer 2026. This new venue represents a pivotal step in the brand's growth, marking its first out-of-town expansion and the start of a 10-year vision to scale across the Southeastern United States. AplósThe Oxford location will be built outside the town square, a strategic move aimed at serving both the city's growing local population and the influx of students from nearby universities. Founder and executive chef Alex Eaton explains, 'Oxford is a vibrant college town, but its growth has outpaced the infrastructure around the square. We saw an opportunity to be part of the community where people live, study, and spend their weekends, not just where they party.' The decision to expand to Oxford was not made lightly. It followed careful planning, community engagement, and groundwork to ensure Aplós doesn't just arrive but truly belong to the community. Eaton has already met with local officials and planners to understand how Aplós can contribute meaningfully to the area. 'For me, it's not enough to have good food and a good-looking brand,' Eaton says. 'We want to be woven into the community fabric, partnering with schools, giving students work experience, and showing up where it matters.' AplósThis emphasis on local connection is part of what Eaton calls the 'recipe for the brand.' Inspired by his years working in the fine dining kitchens of New Orleans and his Lebanese heritage, Aplós combines Mediterranean simplicity with Southern hospitality. However, Eaton believes that a healthy business starts with people. 'Before we grow, we have to grow our executive team, our culture, our values,' he says. 'You can't build a restaurant in a new city if the foundation is not rock solid.' Oxford will be the third Aplós location, following successful openings in Jackson and Ridgeland, Mississippi. The new location will sit alongside key community spaces, a high school, a movie theater, and new student apartment beds, giving it direct access to a mix of families, students, and young professionals. 'This is not about replicating a chain,' Eaton says. 'Each location of Aplós should feel like its own thing. That's how we avoid becoming just another brand.' The long-term plan is ambitious. Eaton and his team are eyeing 10 Aplós locations in 10 years, with targeted growth in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and eventually Arkansas and Texas. 'We are focused on what I call 'community-centric development,'' says Eaton. 'If we are going to grow, it's got to be in places where we can be more than a restaurant. We need to be a job creator, a support system, a gathering spot.' AplósAs the brand expands, Aplós will continue to invest in business coaching, internal leadership development, and youth employment programs. The company already works with high schools and plans to collaborate with hospitality colleges to offer credit-earning internships. 'Growth is one of our core values,' says Eaton. 'If you're not growing, whether as a dishwasher or a regional manager, you are probably in the wrong place.' At its core, the Oxford expansion is a litmus test. 'Back home, people support us because they know me,' Eaton says. 'Oxford is different. People don't care who I am; they will judge us by our product, our team, and how we show up in their community. That's what makes this so real.' If all goes according to plan, the Oxford launch will be the start of something much bigger than just another restaurant. It will be the blueprint for how Aplós grows, with integrity, intentionality, and local roots firmly planted in every community it Contact Name: Elizabeth Lanza Email: marketing@ Sign in to access your portfolio
Travel Weekly
18-05-2025
- Business
- Travel Weekly
World Travel wants to boost vacation sales, but don't call it 'leisure'
Alex Eaton, CEO of World Travel in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is on a personal mission to eradicate the term "leisure" from the travel industry's vernacular. "For me, the word 'leisure' is just doing nothing," Eaton said, adding that it connotes leisure suits -- "not a good look, not a good vibe" -- and retirement communities, which often use the term leisure in their names. The CEO prefers the term "vacation," and that's the portion of World Travel's business that he and president Matt King are working to build. The agency currently has a business mix of about 75% corporate travel and 25% leisure (sorry, Alex). World Travel recently reorganized its leadership, with Eaton moving from president to CEO and King from executive vice president to president, all to further the goal of growing the World Travel Vacation Department. "Matt and I both want to have a little more balance in the work portfolio, from our profit standpoint, from a revenue-generating standpoint," Eaton said. "If the pandemic taught us anything, being super reliant on one side of the business -- groups, corporate or vacation -- is a recipe for potential disaster." Ideally, Eaton said, vacation travel would make up 40% to 45% of World Travel's business, something he and King hope to achieve with a two-pronged approach. First, they plan to bolster the agency's leisure advisor infrastructure. For corporate travel, for example, there are processes in place for managing airline schedule changes and unused tickets. But the agency's leisure advisors are doing things "soup to nuts," Eaton said, which he believes can be streamlined with better processes and procedures. That could include an air desk. "They're professionals," Eaton said. "They do an amazing job. The best thing that we can do is get them freed up to spend more time on the phone with our customers and helping them." Second, they want to develop new talent in-house as employees, not via onboarding more independent contractors. That strategy bucks the host agency/IC model that has proliferated in vacation travel in recent years, but it's one Eaton said he believes in. While World Travel does have a handful of ICs, Eaton said, they are mostly former employees who are semiretired. The agency now has around 68 full-time employees and plans to add more leisure advisors to the mix. Eaton said it would take 18 to 24 months before those new advisors start generating revenue. "We understand that, and our goal is to find the right people to invest in and make it very clear to them that we're investing in them, we're investing in their future, in part because we're investing in the company's future," he said. Eaton doesn't have a specific goal for the number of advisors who will focus on vacation travel, but World Travel plans to hire five or six people in the next six months. He is looking for advisors who will not only sell travel well but fit into World Travel's culture as good teammates. World Travel's evolution The push for more vacation sales is the latest evolution for World Travel, which has gone through a number of changes since its founding in the late 1950s as a tour operator taking Midwesterners to the Northeast on fall foliage trips. Eaton and his father, Len, purchased the agency in 1997, and King joined 17 years ago. In 2021, World Travel rebranded from World Travel Service. World Travel plans to continue supporting and growing its corporate business. Its target clients are small and medium-size enterprises with annual travel budgets under $20 million. The corporate business has grown organically over the years, something King said he expects will continue. World Travel also has been investing in AI to streamline processes. "We find ourselves being high tech and high touch," said King, who is a believer in the right blend of "people, content, process, tech." "You've got to have the right mixture," he said, "but we really want to always lean into the human side of that."
