The CEO of Cotton Patch Cafe has added making the Park Cities and Preston Hollow safer to his menu of business goals.
Brandon Coleman, who served as CEO of TGI Fridays and held leadership roles with Dave & Buster’s and Del Frisco’s Grille before taking the helm at Cotton Patch Cafe, has opened the area’s first SafeWay Driving School at the corner of Hillcrest Avenue and Northwest Highway.
“My life’s all about leaving things better than I found them,” Brandon said. “I thought this was a great opportunity to invest in Dallas and the community, and to help people protect their kids and others on the road.”
SafeWay Driving’s methodology involves both online courses and hands-on driving instruction. The school uses a method called commentary driving, which teaches motorists to be proactive and identify potential threats before they become problems, Brandon explained.
Brandon knows the method works — both he and his brother, Brad, are SafeWay Driving graduates, and Brad is the company’s CEO.
“Having that experience and seeing how a proactive method really created better driving — that was important to me,” Brandon said.
Brad, a former NASCAR driver, bought SafeWay from the company’s founders in 2010, then sold it to a group of investors who ran it from 2013 to 2022, when Brad bought it back.
Brad said opening a location in the Park Cities area marks the accomplishment of a long-held goal.
“We had talked for a while, for years, about opening a SafeWay (in the area), and how well it would do for the community,” he said. “It’s had a special place in both of our hearts for a while just as graduates. In my NASCAR racing days, I got plugged back in with SafeWay through sponsor obligations initially.”
Brad said talking to students when he was a NASCAR driver about the dangers of distracted driving further drew him to SafeWay’s mission.
For Brandon, there is a throughline between his experience in restaurant leadership and his work as owner of SafeWay Driving’s new location. As a Park Cities resident and father, he’d noticed a dearth of commercial driving schools in the area.
“I saw a business that does it right, and I saw a community that was missing someone doing it right,” he said. “I think that the quality that Safeway Driving delivers is in line with what the people from the Park Cities expect.”
Coleman said there were three instructors as of late March at the Hillcrest Avenue location, and that the business was considering upping that number.
“The purpose of our brand is to prevent the phone call that nobody wants,” he added. “Our kids are what we care about the most, and driving is the most dangerous thing they’ll do.”
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