Who are Tony and Grant Phelan?

Tony learned the business from the bottom

Tony grew up in Texas and started in restaurants the way most people do. He washed dishes, bussed tables and waited on guests, and a $500 scholarship sent him to the University of Houston’s new hotel and restaurant program. He learned the trade at Steak and Ale in its early years under founder Norman Brinker and became one of its rising managers. More on his early career here.

In the early 1980s he opened O’Phelan’s Irish Pub in Texas and more restaurants followed. When the oil bust hit the state, the family lost them. In 1989 they moved to Southwest Florida with almost nothing, and Tony went back to waiting tables at The Dock at Crayton Cove in Naples.

Grant grew up in it

Grant was about 12 when the family moved to Naples. He bagged groceries at Publix as a teenager, went to Barron Collier High School and then to Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration. In 1997, at 19, he took a semester off to help his father build the first Pinchers.

He waited tables at night and put his tips toward building supplies. When the doors opened on October 15, 1997, he was the first chef. He also built the relationship with Island Crab Company on Pine Island that still supplies the restaurants.

“I cooked every day, and my dad worked on the floor each day.”

Grant Phelan, Business Observer, 2025

How they work together

Tony brought decades of restaurant experience and a habit of building things himself. Grant brought formal training and the energy to do whatever needed doing. Both still talk about the first months, when every dollar mattered and a good day meant about $600 in sales.

Tony’s standard for the restaurants has always been simple: people should leave feeling looked after. The family’s other line is that Southwest Florida is “God’s greatest dining room”, and Grant still repeats it.

“We want people to come back and say you took care of me.”

Tony Phelan, Cape Coral Breeze, 2019

Still a family business

Grant became director of operations as Pinchers grew and now leads Phelan Family Brands as president and CEO. The company has added other restaurants over the years, but Pinchers is the one his father started, and it is still owned by the family. Tony remains closely involved in how each restaurant looks and feels, from the signs to the rooms.

Ask either of them about the early days and you will hear the same stories: the pallet tables, the 11:31 opening, the regulars who kept coming back. Kathleen Phelan is part of every one of them.

Common questions

Who owns Pinchers?

The Phelan family. Grant Phelan has described the business as owned by his mother, his father and himself: Kathleen, Tony and Grant Phelan.

Who founded Pinchers?

Tony Phelan founded Pinchers in Bonita Springs in 1997, with his son Grant as the first chef.

Who is Grant Phelan?

Grant Phelan is Tony and Kathleen Phelan’s son and the president and CEO of Phelan Family Brands, the family’s Florida restaurant group. He studied at Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration.

Is Pinchers a chain?

No. Pinchers is family owned and operated by the Phelans. Every restaurant is run by the family’s own company, with no franchises.