NOTE: Throughout the month of July, BrownwoodNews.com is publishing stories daily on 40 standout citizens under the age of 40 making a positive impact and contribution within the Brown County community.

A rare business opportunity is taking place in Brown County where Brownwood native Bridget Jones is serving as the owner/operator for the Chick-fil-A franchise located at 500 East Commerce Street.

“It was a three-year journey to become owner/operator for Chick-fil-A Brownwood,” Jones explained. “Chick-fil-A is unique. You don’t get to choose where you want to go, they partner and figure out who is going to be the best fit for the community that they are sending someone to. We didn’t get to select Brownwood, Brownwood was selected for us. Typically no one gets to go home, so we’re a very unique story and that we were chosen to get to come back and open Brownwood’s first free-stander.”

Jones, 36, is a 2004 graduate of Brownwood High School and a 2008 graduate of Howard Payne University. Jones began her career as a teacher but changed paths after being diagnosed with cancer and began her pursuit of a Chick-fil-A franchise.

“I left the teaching field and went on to buy a different franchise, not Chick-fil-A, and had good success with it and ending up winning franchise of the year in 2017,” Jones said. “I felt like I wanted to do more for my community, so I got interested in Chick-fil-A and started the Chick-fil-A process in 2017. At that time, they were getting 40,000 applications a year and they only selected about 100 to 200 people, so my odds weren’t great. I went through the process, there were seven steps at the time, and I was told no at the sixth step in 2018. I had sold my other business and wasn’t going to go back to teaching, so I went back in and started my process completely over.

“They said what I was missing was the restaurant leadership experience, so I went to an operator who lived near me and said I wanted to go all in on this. I wanted to learn everything in the business possible, and she hired me full time to learn chicken. I started with her in the summer of 2018 and worked my way up under her leadership and in 2019 I helped her open her second location as her restaurant director. Her first location was in Cedar Park and her second location was in Leander.

“In the summer of 2019, I got to restart the process and at that point they were getting about 80,000 to 100,000 applications a year. They had added more steps, so it went from a seven-step process to a nine-step process, and my particular journey ended up being 11 steps. But I ended up getting selected for Brownwood in February of 2020.”

Regarding Chick-fil-A’s decision to open a location in Brownwood, Jones said, “They were trying to find a free-standing location for quite a few years. They looked in Early, they looked in Brownwood and they actually tried to negotiate on some different properties, but then the BMDD ended up stepping forward and saying, ‘we’ve got this park and I think we can really make something out of it and make it something better for the community.’ We’re the only Chick-fil-A that I know of that’s built next to a city park and actually shares a parking lot with one, so that’s a unique setup.”

Having Chick-fil-A located right next Lednicky Park has been more beneficial than Jones ever imagined.

“That partnership has been a dream,” Jones said. “The city has done a great job taking care of the park. What I’ve enjoyed just being a Brownwood girl is seeing all the families use the park. The city came in and added the little playground, and we suggested adding the tables and lights, and that has been great. We opened in November 2020 during COVID and not having our dining room open at that time, being able to offer a place for families to go was a great advantage for us.”

As for the most rewarding aspect of her job, Jones said, “Probably the opportunity to have influence over people in a good way. We’ve got a staff of about 100. Just getting to have direct influence over their lives and families and that honor of getting to care of local families is a really great thing for us.”

Chick-fil-A is involved with a variety of organizations and fundraising efforts throughout the community.

 Last year was our first year to work with Lindsay Smith, the Brownwood High principal, and this will be our second year.

“We also support through a lot of different donation opportunities, the Boys & Girls Club, and we donate sandwiches for them. We also support different programs at the high school doing fundraisers and things like that. Being from here, it gives us the opportunity to plug in and help give back to the town that raised us.”

Jones stated her long-term career goals are for Chick-fil-A Brownwood to be known as the most caring company in Brownwood.

“As we move forward and are working on our goals, we’re always thinking about how we take care of our team members, because if we take care of our team members, they’re going to take care of our guests,” Jones said. “To become a really premier employer things that we have been focusing lately on is providing free college through Point University to every team member on our staff, and then we offer things like 401K, health insurance, free Chick-fil-A when someone works, competitive pay, and flexible schedules, which has been really important. We really believe if we take care of those 100 team members, they’ll take care of the thousands of guests that come see us every day.”

Jones and her husband Jonathan, who is the Executive Operating Partner in the restaurant, met at the Coggin Avenue Baptist Church youth group and years later were married by Ricky Cavitt, their former youth group leader. The couple has two children, daughter Rylin and son Braxton.

“My husband has been such a support to me,” Jones said. “He was a coach and teacher for 12 years and whenever I was selected to be the operator in Brownwood, he left coaching and teaching to come work with me at the business. He has been an incredible support.”