Scott Moore figured there was a big niche in breakfast and lunch, which he proved by selling his first concept after seven years for $36 million.
Cash. To him, his co-founder, investors – and store leaders.
That’s what Cracker Barrel Old Country Store Inc. paid in 2019 for Maple Street Biscuit Co., which sells biscuit sandwiches, as well as coffee and now other items, for breakfast and lunch.
If a business based on biscuits can rise to that degree, Moore hopes that his next big idea follows suit.
That would be breakfast tacos. And a coffee bar.
“There was this whole space that we didn’t know was there,” Moore says as he prepares to open his first Calico Cactus, A Modern Taco Shop, in St. Augustine.
Its tagline is Tacos-Queso-Coffee.
With the 2019 purchase, Moore committed to stay with Maple Street for three years and moved near Cracker Barrel’s Lebanon, Tennessee, headquarters. His noncompete concluded in November 2023.
“Candidly, I struggled to figure out what the next thing was,” said Moore, 63.
He researched trends and found that breakfast tacos are big in Austin and other parts of Texas.
To the north, he found King David Tacos in Brooklyn, New York, which serves nine breakfast tacos on flour tortillas made in Austin, and another restaurant, Le Tejana in Washington, D.C., with a menu of nine breakfast tacos.
“The tortilla is becoming the generic product that you can make.”
But … soft tacos?
“When we started Maple Street, some people could not get their head around what a biscuit company was. Back then, nobody knew,” he said.
They do now.
“Five years later, we had a lot of entities copying what we were doing.”
Indeed, the space attracted Vicious Biscuit, which opened its first of nine locations in 2017. Its flagship is in South Carolina, with a Florida shop in Neptune Beach.
Moore sees opportunity again.
“I see the same opportunity to create a new market in the brunch space, with this breakfast taco concept that serves a full barista offering, which I saw starting Maple Street,” Moore said.
“We are making food for our friends and our neighbors. We are making it from scratch.”
It’s also a second venture into entrepreneurship.
“This concept helps us to leverage a lot of the things that worked well at Maple Street but also allows us to improve on things that were challenges,” he said.
It doesn’t surprise Jim Stallings, founder of Jacksonville-based PS27 Ventures, an investor in small-business innovators.
“I am a big fan of Scott Moore and not surprised he is back in town doing something big,” said Stallings, an admirer but not an investor in Calico Cactus.
“He is always ahead of the market with new concepts and innovative business approaches. Scott is a natural entrepreneur and one of the most approachable leaders I’ve ever met. With Scott, it’s always ‘take care of your people and they will take care of the customer.’”
Calico Cactus will be based in Tennessee, but operated at each local restaurant.
“I do not believe in having a ‘corporate team,’” Moore said.
“We are all here to serve and anyone who is to support the store teams will work out of a store most of the time.”
The concept
Moore expects to open the first Calico Cactus on Dec. 17, pending permits, in a former 2,400-square-foot Tijuana Flats at 833 S. Ponce de Leon Blvd., along the San Sebastian River in St. Augustine.
“Somebody I knew happened to see it,” Moore said.
He talked with the property owner, who “liked the idea of our concept.”
Moore said he is leaving most of the walls intact, but removing other interior décor and putting in millwork, banquettes, tables and chairs and a Corian-brand countertop for a tortilla island visible to customers.
Hours will be 7 a.m.-3 p.m. daily. Moore is hiring 25 full- and part-time employees.
Calico Cactus will be fast-casual, where guests will order at the front counter, take their seats and food will be delivered to the table.
Workers will make the flour tortillas throughout the day. Soft corn tortillas also will be available.
The menu focuses on soft tacos for breakfast and lunch with chips and dips, sides, salads, bowls, kids’ meals and sweet treats.
Moore said the tortillas, salsas and sauces will be made from scratch. The four-cheese queso comes with “a little kick.”
A salsa station of mild, medium and hot sauces will allow customers to choose or mix to their tastes.
A full barista-staffed coffee bar is on tap, too.
The coffee bar will feature coffee and tea, espresso drinks and lattes, and agua frescas, limeade and more. Oat milk and almond milk can be subbed into lattes for $1.
Bottles and cans will include Topo Chico, Mexican Coke, Diet Coke, Cheerwine, bottled water, sweet tea and chocolate milk.
Mimosas also are on the menu.
In addition to the barista-made drinks, there is a coffee service where customers can grab a cup and serve themselves.
Calico Cactus will seat 82 people inside and 24 on the patio. There is no drive-thru.
Being along the San Sebastian River, there is land for a deck that Moore said is planned in a second phase.
Parking is on-site at the shopping plaza, which Calico Cactus shares with Jersey Mike’s Subs and Orangetheory Fitness.
The website, calicocactus.com, is live this week for updates.
The menu
The menu has six “brekkie” and five “lunchier” tacos, along with a taco of the week.
Prices start at $3.75 for the M.T.D. taco of potato, eggs and Monterey Jack cheese. The Texas Hold ‘Em tops out at $5.25 with beef barbacoa brisket, eggs and Monterey Jack cheese.
M.T.D. is for “meet the day,” which Moore tells his visiting grandchildren in the morning. “I get up and tell them, ‘Let’s go meet the day.’”
Lunch tacos start at $3.75 for the Prairie Dog of refried beans, potato and Monterey Jack. That menu tops at $5.25 for the Fireproof of beef barbacoa brisket, potatoes, poblano pepper and queso.
There will be vegetarian and gluten-free options.
Moore said it took multiple steps to reach the final menu.
“First, we researched what were the most popular breakfast tacos in Austin, Texas, since eating breakfast tacos is a way of life there,” he said.
“We also wanted the menu to be unique, where if you like it you have to come to us to get it. So, as part of our inspiration we looked to some our favorite dishes and looked to convert them into tacos.”
Former Maple Street community leader Amanda Urbizu joined Moore and his family in Tennessee, “and worked on recipes in our kitchen.”
“She nailed the queso,” Moore said.
“After that we rented a commercial kitchen where Amanda worked on each of the recipes including all our fresh-made salsas.”
The décor is by Makayla Morse, the granddaughter of Moore’s best friend.
“She owns a T-shirt printing shop in Chattanooga and based on us describing the concept she designed the logo and developed the brand guide.”
The name is by Moore.
He floated several possibilities to people he knew and chose Calico Cactus, which is a plant found in the desert areas of the southwestern United States and Mexico.
“Since the food is inspired by Tex-Mex food, I wanted to have a nod to that truth.”
The niche
Moore knows how to fill a niche space.
He and Gus Evans didn’t know how big the space was in biscuits when they launched Maple Street in 2012, as the 2007-09 Great Recession lingered.
Moore, then 51 and married with three adult children, left as a vice president of Jacksonville-based Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. as it merged with Bi-Lo LLC in March 2012 to form Southeastern Grocers.
Evans, then 33 and married with two young sons, lost his construction job during the recession and was considering a relocation out of town.
The men attended the same church. They set up a meeting at Starbucks and decided Moore’s idea of creating a restaurant focused on comfort food with a modern twist had promise.
They settled on biscuits.
They first based Maple Street in cowork space in Downtown Jacksonville before moving the headquarters to Orange Park in Clay County, where it was headquartered when Cracker Barrel bought it.
Maple Street had 33 restaurants in seven states upon the 2019 sale.
Moore was 58. Evans was 40 with four sons under the age of 13.
Moore remained CEO and moved to Tennessee.
Evans opted to stay in Jacksonville, where he owns Arrow Investment Properties LLC and Arrow Renovations and Design LLC.
Moore and Evans based Maple Street on a mission to help people serve others.
They opened “community stores” rather than restaurants.
Stores were led by “community leaders” rather than store managers.
Employees were “ambassadors.”
Moore said he and Evans didn’t know when they started Maple Street what the opportunity would be, but the sale yielded bonus checks to some of those leaders.
Along with Urbizu, who is director of mission and model, other previous employees also followed him to Calico Cactus.
Ambassador and assistant community leader Janie Locke will be the lead trainer.
Urbizu and Locke worked at the Maple Street in the Murray Hill neighborhood.
Former Maple Street General Counsel Alexandria Hill, now a partner with the Driver, McAfee, Hawthorne & Diebenow law firm in Jacksonville, is outside counsel for Calico Cactus.
“She gives me a hard time. Why aren’t you on a sailboat in the Caribbean?” Moore said.
Hill, who was in-house general counsel for Maple Street upon the sale, also moved to Tennessee to be COO for the subsidiary but the “beach girl” returned to Florida after two years.
Again, no surprise at Moore’s decision.
“He is too creative, he really is,” Hill said.
“I am surprised he took a year between leaving Maple Street to get the concept started. But his wheels were turning that whole year,” she said.
“A true entrepreneur can’t sit still.”
The investment vision
Calico Cactus is starting as a $2 million venture.
Moore said he and the Calico Cactus partners, some who were Maple Street investors, set aside that amount to build the first stores and set the potential for franchising.
Moore said the St. Augustine restaurant will cost about $400,000 to complete the build-out.
In addition to St. Augustine, Calico Cactus signed a lease north of Atlanta in Alpharetta, Georgia, for space at 100 N. Main St., which Moore said is a new three-story building designed to look old. That could open in January.
It features an outside patio and is next to a pocket park along with rooftop seating.
The Alpharetta site will cost about $600,000.
A third location is expected.
“We want to get three done fairly quickly and we are still looking for the third in a market where we know it will be a home run,” he said.
Moore likes the Orlando and north Atlanta markets. Jacksonville also is in the mix.
Moore said the investment group wants to start franchising after the third company-owned community store.
“We already have two people interested in franchising after we get the first store opened,” he said.
“A lot of people are looking for opportunities.”
Moore envisions 50 Calico Cactus stores four years after opening the first.
“That sounds like a lot but we grew to 33 Maple Streets in six years and we had limited experience in the industry,” Moore said.
He said growth at Maple Street was linear “as we built one company store after another.”
“We plan for the Calico Cactus growth to be more exponential as we leverage the franchisee model.”
He said the next 47 stores will be franchises in a territory east of the Mississippi River, an area that “lets us lead them appropriately.”
Moore said Calico Cactus has 10 investors and may add more. There are five major investors and five smaller investors.
He said three of the major investors were part of Maple Street, which had multiple types of investment.
One is Jim Horton, an investor in Maple Street, the first to sign up for Calico Cactus, Moore’s best friend and Makayla Morse’s grandfather.
Moore was majority owner of Maple Street, but said the sale agreement does not allow him to share details of his proceeds.
He said “several things got paid before I did,” including debt and the bonuses to the community leaders.
Maple Street’s mission was “Help People. Serve others. Be a part of the community.”
The Calico Cactus team decided on “Be better. Serve harder. Show Grace.”
“The goal was to be a better offering for our guest. That makes us different but the goal is to be better,” Moore said.
“Gracious service is something Scott enforces,” Hill said.
Moore also understands the necessity to build a brand, including positive buzz on social media.
“We don’t want to be an option. We want to be a destination,.”
Moore, who continues to live in Thompson’s Station, Tennessee, flies regularly to Jacksonville for business and to visit family.
He and his wife, Robyn, have three children and five grandchildren.
Southwest has three nonstop flights daily. “I can be here in 90 minutes.”
Moore also intends to visit with Jacksonville-based Southeastern Grocers, which was sold to Aldi this year.
“I got a call from Winn-Dixie to talk to a Christmas party there, to tell my story and do some training with them,” Moore said.
Maple Street now has 69 locations, with seven in Northeast Florida, in 10 states.
Oh, and soft tacos, made with flour tortillas, are on its menu.
It wasn’t unexpected. Taco Bell’s former international president, Julie Felss Masino, took over as Cracker Barrel president and CEO in November 2023.
“I wasn’t surprised to see them add this item,” Moore said.
“It just validates that we are on the right track. I completed my noncompete agreement, so we are free to build the model as we think it best serves the guest.”
Moore wants to execute the concept to make sure the opportunities pan out.
“It’s been quite a journey.”