Tharp is the chairman and chief executive officer of Allen Tharp, LLC of San Antonio, Texas, and Olde England’s Lion and Rose British restaurant and pubs, as well as a minority partner in a chain of quick-service chicken restaurants called Golden Fried Chick. Tharp also runs a small construction company that does all of the finish on the Lion and Rose restaurants, as well as high-end custom cabinets and furniture. It is noteworthy that Tharp’s endeavors provide over 850 local jobs to Austinites and San Antonians and pump almost $30 million annually into the local economy.

Tharp has also served as a liaison for Government and Legislative Affairs and as a speaker at various restaurant industry conferences, and he is an active member of the president’s forum.

With so many accomplishments, it is fascinating to know how the son of an oil driller who shared a room with his sister until he was nine found his way to the Texas Hill Country from humble beginnings in Odessa, Texas.

Tharp’s earliest memories of his loving family take us first to Argentina.

“After working in the oil field for years as a driller,” Tharp said, “my father was sent to the southern tip of Argentina and relocated our family to a small town called Rio Grande on the island of Tierra del Fuego. Although it would get as cold as 60 below zero with snow and sometimes tremendous winds, my sister and I loved it. Our house in Argentina had a bathroom that had to be accessed by walking through a separate room we used as our freezer in the winter and refrigerator in the summer. We literally had mutton and pork legs hanging on nails in this room. This was the last island on the continent before Antarctica. I have very fond memories of horseback riding, fishing, sledding, ice skating and good friends during our two years in Argentina.”

Tharp’s family later moved back to Odessa, where he graduated from Odessa High School. He worked various jobs to get money while in high school, from digging ditches, unloading box cars and roofing in the summers to playing in bands and working as a salesman in the evenings after school.

After graduating from high school, Tharp found himself married to his first wife and working in the county attorney’s office in Odessa with aspirations to become an attorney. Neither his wife nor his job kept Tharp’s interest.

He graduated Suma Cum Laude and a member of the Dean’s Honor Roll in 1981 from the University of Texas Permian Basin, with a B.A. in political science. He also minored in Spanish and Russian and worked on an M.B. while he attended the University of Irvine in California.

“I moved to California to seek fortune and fame,” Tharp said. “Although I didn't find fortune or fame there, I sure had a great time looking for it.”

After graduating from college, Tharp traveled the country backpacking and recording music in Houston and eventually found his second wife. As a true entrepreneur, playing music wouldn’t satisfy the businessman in him. While in Houston, he started a truck leasing company and was selling cars.

1981, however, was not a good year for Tharp.

“In 1981, [my second wife] Roxy and I broke up, and my dad was diagnosed with terminal bladder cancer,” he said. “Not such a good year! I left Houston and went to Fort Worth to help my sister and mother take care of dad. I will never forget the feeling as one minute his heart was beating, and then his pulse just stopped under my fingers. A high school football player, boxer and perpetual pillar of strength throughout his life, my dad was finally beaten by cancer.”

An unforeseen series of events involving a Volkswagen van that broke down on a trip to California, thus unexpectedly extending the trip, resulted in Tharp staying in California and starting a carpet-cleaning business. This also led to Tharp meeting his current wife, Elena, who has since worked hand-in-hand with him in his many business ventures.

“By the end of1983,” Tharp said, “a brother-in-law from Texas had convinced us to move to Fort Worth to partner up with him in the cabinet-installation business. So I sold the carpet business and moved with my wife to Fort Worth. I loved the work, but construction can be cyclical, and the partnership did not develop as I hoped. I wanted to expand by adding more crews and picking up more cabinet shops; my brother-in-law was afraid that expansion would negatively affect the quality of work.

“So I decided to make another career change. My wife had been in the catering business in California, and I had taken restaurant-management courses. I also had some experience working in restaurants. So I entered in to a Randolph-Sheppard food service management-training program. Soon thereafter, I saw an opportunity to open a restaurant adjacent to a major hotel in Dallas; I jumped at the idea.

“With a taste of success in the hospitality industry, I decided to start looking for ways to expand. I began to seriously study restaurant operations and appreciate the science involved. I devoured books on all aspects of the industry. I learned much from others who had spent their lives in this industry. I continued with restaurant management training, and I learned the most from plain, old on-the-job training. There is no substitute for the school of hard knocks.”

Tharp and his wife worked long hours growing, learning and acquiring restaurants throughout Texas and aiming for ever larger and more challenging operations.

In 1993, Tharp began his quest to expand his business through obtaining military food service management and staffing contracts. After three more years, his efforts finally came to fruition.

“My company took over the operations of the largest food service contract in the Air Force in 1996 and has continued to manage and operate the food service at Lackland AFB, Kelly USA, Medina and Defender Inn at Camp Bullis ever since,” he said. “We are feeding almost one million high-quality meals per month to our military personnel.”

Although Tharp’s early nomadic travels and romances may give you an image of a man with shallow roots, his family is of utmost importance.

“In 1999, my sister was diagnosed with terminal cancer at the age of 52,” Tharp said. “I wanted to spend some quality time with her during her last days and wanted to do something special for her; so I asked her where she would like to go if she could pick any destination in the world. I told her that I would finance a trip to Paris, London or anywhere she chose. She chose Argentina.”

Tharp was met in Argentina by old friends who had also become successes.

“A stretch limo picked us up at the airport and took us to one of the finest hotels in the city,” he said. “When [my sister] Brenda was a 12-year-old girl and living in Argentina, she envisioned her ‘grown-up’ life as living in fine hotels and drinking martinis at the piano bar. So for a short while, her dream came true.”

In 2004, Tharp founded a string of British restaurants and pubs called Olde England's Lion and Rose, known to us as Lion & Rose. There is now one Lion & Rose restaurant in Westlake, and there are four Lion & Rose locations in San Antonio.

More recently, Tharp purchased a minority interest in Golden Fried Chick with the intention of not only expanding the concept in Texas, but also to take it to several regions in Asia, including China. He still, however, has plans for Lion & Rose.

“We are considering a partnership with certain upscale hotels because we see the Lion & Rose as a perfect fit,” he said. “We are also considering a scaled down version of the Lion & Rose to go in airports. When you come to The Lion & Rose for the first time, you experience the feeling that you’ve been missing something and now you’ve found it. And once you’re a regular, which you’re sure to be, you wonder, ‘Where the hell were we all the time we weren’t here?’”