VEDP: You mentioned that you went to segregated schools up through fifth grade. You’re the great-great-grandson of an enslaved person. How has your family and personal history informed your perspective?
 
Thompson: I didn’t know him, but I knew all my great-grandparents. I knew my great-grandfather, whose father was born into slavery. It’s not that long ago, and I hope we don’t forget it because what I lived through growing up in the South, I see some of that coming back. Just the other day, I heard that one of our bartenders was confronted by a customer and told, “You're the only N-word that I’ve ever gotten along with, and I’m in the KKK.” That stuff used to happen back in the ’60s, and it’s happening now. I thought we had gotten beyond that as a country but, unfortunately, we’re going through a very difficult time again. I hope we can get through it sooner than later.
 
VEDP: What is your approach to diversity in business?
 
Thompson: We have, I think, the most diverse company in the industry, but we’ve never had a meeting about it, never written a plan, or had a diversity club or anything. Our principle has always been to hire the best person. If you’re in a diverse geographic area and you hire the best person, you’re going to have a diverse workforce. It’s when you allow blinders to come on that you end up with a population not reflective of the community. So, it’s impossible to have a headquarters in Reston, Va., and not be diverse if you’re going after the best available people.
 
It’s impossible to have contracts in places like Chicago or New York or the Tidewater area of Virginia and not have a diverse workforce if you’re hiring the best. We talk about casting our net wide, and when we do so, we catch a very diverse workforce. When you look at our executive team or one level below, it’s reflective of the communities we serve, plain and simple.
 
VEDP: You talk about giving back. How, specifically, do you like to do that?
 
Thompson: Early on, we decided to get into the contract food service business. We were supposed to do it in Year Five, according to the plan, but it actually happened in the first year because some restaurants started to fail. That’s when we started to really push scholarship programs, giving back to the schools we partnered with. We now give back about $5 million a year in financial support to HBCUs, mostly in scholarships.
 
We’re providing financial resources so some students can complete their education when they may not have been able to without that funding. We’re actively involved and engaged with the schools we support. I speak at them, and our other executives will speak to young people who want to get into business or own their own businesses.
 
We believe in giving back strongly to the community and forcing our competition to do so as well. If I don’t win an account, the competitor who did win will have to step up and do the right thing from a financial perspective by putting money back into some of these schools that were being taken advantage of 25–30 years ago.

VEDP: What experience do you want people to have at your restaurants?
 
Thompson: The guiding principles in our company are to do the right thing, do the best you can, and treat others the way you’d like to be treated. We ask all our hourly associates and management to live by those principles. We always say not to serve a plate of food that you would not be willing to eat yourself or serve your family. When people come to our restaurants, I realize they’re from all walks of life. Multimillionaires come in and buying a plate of food is nothing for them. But there are people who have saved up for special occasions. It’s their birthday or graduation, and they’re coming to us to splurge. We owe it to all our customers to make sure their experience is memorable. Even if it’s just a slice of pizza, I want that customer to leave saying that was the best slice of pizza they’ve ever had.
 
We use third-party delivery. You might see the delivery guy turn the box sideways, knowing that pizza inside is going to run down by the time it gets to our customer and not be picture-perfect. Those things upset us as a company, but the industry has changed and a lot of your product is delivered by a third party. We try to manage that by working with our third-party delivery companies to adhere to our standards, but we’re willing to exit the relationship if we cannot get them to deliver the way we want it done. That’s a long way to say that the customer experience is very personal, something we owe the customer above and beyond just a good product.
 
VEDP: How do you define the distinction between a corporate person and an entrepreneur?
 
Thompson: I spend a lot of time interviewing key people in the company, and I’ll ask that question. Most think I want a corporate person, since we’re considered a fairly large company now. But I’m looking for that entrepreneur, which we define as a person willing to take calculated risks to improve their chances of reward and opportunity.
 
I want someone who’s going to question the norm, who’s willing to break the mold, willing to say, “There’s a better way to do this, and it’ll benefit our customers and our bottom line.” I don’t want people to just say, “Well, corporate decided to use this particular vendor, so we don’t have a choice.” I want them to constantly question what we’re doing and how can we do it better.
 
At Marriott, I hired a bunch of people who were younger than me, and we called ourselves “The Renegades.” We decided to put national brands in airports — Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Burger King. My boss at the time told me I was crazy, and I was going to get fired because it would never work. But at that point in life, I said, “I want to break the mold. I want to question the norm. I want to do something different. I want to prepare to be an entrepreneur because that’s where I’m headed.”
 
It worked. It changed the airport industry. So, I want people like that now in Thompson Hospitality who are going to question what we do, how we do it, and come up with a better way of doing it. You don’t get that from corporate people, but from entrepreneurial-driven associates.
 
VEDP: You live in Fairfax County. What’s your ideal weekend there?
 
Thompson: I’m into boating, so it’s great that we’re less than 30 minutes from The Wharf, the D.C. waterfront. We spend a lot of time down there on weekends during the summer, going out. We love to fish. I have a 4-and-a-half-year-old daughter, so most of my time now is spent doing what she tells me to do. She told me the other day that she’s the boss, she owns the company, and I work for her. That pretty much says it all. We watch a lot of “Bluey,” and we spend a lot of time learning numbers. I enjoy seeing her soak up things like a sponge.
 
We visit the restaurants a lot on weekends and she’ll do table touches. She’ll go around and ask customers what they think of the food and if things are good. So, a lot of family time, and I’m very fortunate at my age to have a young child.