I've lived in Olive Branch since 2000, back when the stretch near McGregor Crossing was mostly open land and a two-lane commute into Memphis. These days I drive past it several times a week, and for the past three years I've noticed something that took me a while to name: almost every new restaurant that lands here already had a following before it crossed the state line.
Guthrie's. Eggs Up Grill. Now Jim 'N Nick's Bar-B-Q. Three different companies, three different owners, three separate announcements spread across three years. But look closely at where each one built its reputation first, and the pattern is hard to miss. Olive Branch isn't where these chains take a gamble. It's where they cash in a bet they already won somewhere else in the Memphis suburbs.
The Cordova Connection
When Guthrie's opened its Olive Branch location at 8277 McGregor Crossing in October 2023, the company didn't talk about untapped Mississippi potential or demographic projections. Burroughs Restaurant Group president Tyrone Burroughs pointed straight at a specific address across the state line: their Germantown Parkway store in Cordova, Tennessee, where DeSoto County customers had been driving for years just to get chicken fingers.
The Alabama-based chain opened in The Bridges of Camp Creek development at 8277 McGregor Crossing, next door to Huey's. Burroughs put it plainly:
"We've had our eyes on Olive Branch for a long time."
That's not marketing language. That's a company reading its own drive-through data and deciding Olive Branch had earned the investment before a single local sign went up.
Three summers later, a completely unrelated barbecue chain told almost the identical story. Jim 'N Nick's Bar-B-Q, an Alabama-born chain, built its first Mississippi restaurant at 8401 McGregor Crossing in Olive Branch, up the same street where Guthrie's had planted its flag three years earlier. The only other Jim 'N Nick's location in the greater Memphis area sits in Cordova. Neither company coordinated with the other. Neither had reason to know the other's playbook. But both picked the same proving ground on the Tennessee side and the same release valve into Mississippi.
Construction on the McGregor Crossing site was underway as of February 2026, with no opening date announced yet. That changed by early summer. Jim 'N Nick's Bar-B-Q held the opening ceremony of its first Mississippi location in late June, roughly six weeks before this post went up. If you've driven past and seen the parking lot full, that's why.
A Third Chain, A Different Suburb, The Same Logic
Not every new arrival used Cordova as its trial run. Eggs Up Grill picked Germantown instead, and the mechanism still holds.
The Olive Branch restaurant, located at 5142 Goodman Road, is owned and operated by local entrepreneur Jason Heckendorf, who also owns the Germantown, Tennessee location. That's not a throwaway detail. The Germantown location stands out as the top-performing Eggs Up Grill nationwide, out of a franchise system with locations across the country. Heckendorf wasn't opening a new concept in Olive Branch. He was exporting the exact formula that already outperformed every other Eggs Up Grill in America, and he opened it in December 2025 with a ribbon-cutting the company had penned in for early this year.
Line up all three and the shape becomes obvious. A chain builds a following in an established Memphis-area suburb, whether that's Cordova or Germantown. Once the demand crosses the state line on its own, measured in drive-through traffic or franchise performance numbers, the company follows it to Olive Branch.
| Restaurant | Proven first in | Olive Branch address | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Guthrie's | Germantown Parkway, Cordova, TN | 8277 McGregor Crossing | Opened October 2023 |
| Eggs Up Grill | Germantown, TN (top-performing location nationwide) | 5142 Goodman Road | Opened December 2025 |
| Jim 'N Nick's Bar-B-Q | Cordova, TN | 8401 McGregor Crossing | Opened June 2026 |
Why the Road Matters as Much as the Reputation
None of this happens on just any stretch of pavement. Goodman Road carries some of the heaviest commercial traffic in DeSoto County, and the corridor around the Bridges of Camp Creek already anchors national names like Kroger, Chick-fil-A, and Buffalo Wild Wings. A restaurant chain doesn't need a market study to see that. It needs a spot where the households already have the income and the road already has the volume, and Goodman Road has both.
That combination is exactly why Guthrie's and Jim 'N Nick's both ended up on the same street. It's not coincidence and it's not a developer's marketing pitch. It's two companies independently running the same math and landing on the same road.
What This Means If You Already Live Here
If you've eaten at both the Cordova and Olive Branch Guthrie's, you already know they're the same menu, same fryer times, same chicken. That's the point. When a restaurant announces it's coming to Olive Branch, there's a good chance it's already been stress-tested by thousands of Memphis-area regulars first. You're not the trial run. You're the reward for a following that built itself before the building did.
It also means the next time you notice construction going up along McGregor Crossing or Goodman Road, it's worth checking where else that name already exists. If the answer is Cordova or Germantown, you can guess what's coming before the sign does.
Jim 'N Nick's just opened its doors this summer. Whatever comes next on that same stretch of road will probably have a following in Cordova or Germantown already attached to it. That's not a prediction. It's just what's happened three times in three years.
If you've got questions about what's changing in Olive Branch, whether it's the restaurant scene or anything else about living here, feel free to reach out to Christopher Farm. I've watched this corridor grow since 2000, and I'm always glad to talk about it. Let's Connect.
