Alex Holt, CFO of Milo’s Hamburgers, is no longer the new guy in the office. Though he is a first-time CFO of the 78-year-old Birmingham, Alabama-based fast-food chain and just six months in, he is now mostly onboarded, familiar with the team around him and the intricacies of the fast-food business. He has also started forecasting possible areas for strategic growth.
Despite the pressure that comes with running the finances of 24 restaurants on a “lean” executive team, Holt says he is having fun. After viral TikTok moments like run-ins with YouTube stars at Auburn football games, Holt says he is driven to do whatever he can as CFO to help personify the brand of a company that not only has given him his best career opportunity to date but has flourished and created an identity for itself in Alabama, a place where Holt attended college and grew to enjoy so much he built his life there.
Alex Holt
CFO, Milo’s Hamburgers
First CFO Position: 2024
Notable previous employers:
- Capstone Collegiate Communities
- CBRE
- Medical Properties Trust
- PwC
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
ADAM ZAKI: You worked in restaurants as a teenager before entering a career in finance and accounting. Did this experience impact how you’ve taken on the CFO role at Milo’s?
ALEX HOLT: I think everyone, regardless of what career path they choose, could benefit from working in a restaurant. I started when I was 15 years old in Germantown, Tennessee, and it taught me how to work in a fast-paced environment and how to multitask. I was also a server for a while, and the customer service and people skills required to do that sort of work are really valuable.
Don’t get me wrong, I have also always loved Excel and working with numbers but even to this day I get bored if I just look at a spreadsheet all day. My role at Milo’s has been so awesome since I came on board because I have the best of both worlds. A good bit of my job is communicating with people across the business regularly, and the communication skills required for my job now are the ones I developed working in a restaurant many years ago.
Now that you’ve capped six months in your first CFO role and your onboarding process is ending, where are your collaboration efforts focused?
HOLT: We have a very lean corporate team, so accounting sits right next to the marketing team, both at a corporate structure level and in a physical sense in the office. So we are consistently communicating. We have regular meetings with both marketing and operations. There’s a lot of collaboration informally too, especially when we are in the office, like when we pass each other in the hallway or things like that.
What’s a challenge you’re facing right now that you believe may be able to be addressed with technology?
HOLT: Technology is something I am interested in and I have had lots of experience exploring different types of platforms and tools in the past. Since coming on board here, I have had a lot of technology folks reach out and share how much time and money they can save us with their products, but our real challenge is leveraging all of the data we have at our disposal to make the best possible decisions. There are a lot of opportunities here to leverage our data; we have over 70,000 transactions a week, so one of my priorities for next year is to search for a solution that can help us use the information we already have more efficiently.
As most technology companies have branded themselves with AI, how are you able to decipher the differences between the technology you’re being pitched?
HOLT: I’m a big fan of OneNote and the iPhone notes app and feel like I’m constantly trying to write down everything that’s being pitched, but I have also been using generative AI to help me decipher the difference between technologies, or even to do the things some types of technology say they will do for us. I have been using it to write Excel formulas or to help do something in a spreadsheet, which has been helpful. I also used it to differentiate between applicant tracking systems and payroll software differences. This is all part of our goal to develop better practices around data leveraging in the coming year.
I noticed that early in your career you didn’t get bogged down in public accounting. What made you not chase the partner track or a leadership position in a large public accounting firm?
HOLT: Early on, I had an amazing experience at PwC. I will say the training I had there was world-class. I always wanted to have a position where I could help move a business forward, not just report on financial activity. So after public accounting, I went to an asset management and underwriting position at a publicly traded healthcare REIT here in Birmingham, underwriting hospitals.
That was an amazing experience because I learned how to evaluate a business through its operations, creditworthiness, ability to pay rent and that sort of thing. From there, I moved around and worked in a bunch of different finance roles in real estate, which I believe gave me a really good understanding from multiple angles of how a business operates.
Milo’s Tea, the other portion of your business, has a new CFO (Emily Backstrom). How have you communicated with her since she has come on board?
HOLT: I met Emily here in Birmingham at one of our restaurants and talked over an iced tea. She has a fantastic background and she is new to the area. I think together we can help drive the organizations in a positive direction, and I hope that she can be a resource to me as I will do my best to be a resource for her as we both get accustomed.
If the FDA were to ban pesticides like Round-up and Atrazine, resulting in your produce costs going up considerably, how much cost increase could the business handle?
HOLT: This is already something we are focused on and already allocating dollars toward right now. We are hyper-focused on quality. We use 100% ground beef without any fillers. We marinate our chicken overnight and it is hand-breaded in our location. We’ve got a strong relationship with our suppliers and maintaining that relationship is important to us. I think if prices of produce were to increase because of new regulations, we would be well positioned from a financial perspective and supportive from a quality perspective.
Milo’s restaurant business has been operating in Alabama for more than three-quarters of a century. You aren’t a native Alabaman, but went to Auburn University and built your life in Birmingham after college. What made you stick around?
HOLT: I’ve lived in Alabama now for 25 years and I love it. The people here are friendly, everyone is always happy to lend a helping hand. The culture here when it comes to sports and food is amazing. Birmingham in particular is one of the most underrated food towns in the country, I would argue, with multiple James Beard award-winning and nominated restaurants and chefs. Besides Milo’s Hamburgers, places like Johnny’s Restaurant, Helen, Last Call Baking and Golden Age Wine have received national recognition and can go toe-to-toe with any other concept in the U.S.
Milo’s will always be an Alabama brand, even if we have some organic growth opportunities in the future to expand outside of the state. We’ll always look into smart, organic growth opportunities, which will come on their own as long as we keep putting out a great product here at home.
