Even though Kyle Citrano grew up the only child of a Waco restaurant legend, he wasn’t simply handed the keys to the kingdom. He went off to college and then worked for a food brokerage firm for a couple of years before joining the family business. He’s now the co-owner of George’s, George’s #2 and Jorge’s Cantina.
He’s spent most of the last 15 or so years running George’s #2, in the WestRock Centre on Hewitt Drive. And even though he was the boss, “I was on the schedule. I was running shifts,” he said.
More recently, however, Citrano has been working out of the original George’s location, at 1925 Speight Avenue, as his father, Sammy, is winding down his days overseeing the day-to-day operations of the two George’s locations and Jorge’s. Kyle Citrano spends two days a week at each of the three restaurants. His cousin, Kevin Chirafis, is also a managing partner in the business and spends most of his time at Jorge’s and George’s #2.
“Dad’s kind of taken his time and stepped back some. He’s still heavily involved, but he’s not at the restaurants every day,” Citrano said of his father, who bought the original George’s in 1993 with two partners and became sole owner less than two years later. Previously, he was managing partner of the Elite Café, another one-time Waco institution.
When Sammy was running the Elite, and later George’s, he became involved with the Waco chapter of the Texas Restaurant Association and encouraged his son to do the same. When Kyle — who graduated from Midway High School in 2004 — moved back to Waco after college at TCU and working for a food brokerage firm for a while, he did.
“When I got involved, it was a lot of the restaurateurs that had been around town for a long time,” he said. “It was my dad, it was Mr. (Dan) Henderson from Uncle Dan’s (BBQ & Ribhouse) and it was Phil Atkins who had Shipley’s Donuts, and it was a handful of guys. They had been doing it for a while, and Dad said I should get involved, so I helped with a golf tournament. Then next thing I know, they made me the president, and then all of them retired or moved on. So it was like I kind of got handed the keys to this thing, and I was a kid.”
Citrano, 40, took over leadership of the Waco chapter when he was about 27. As he gradually took on more responsibility running the business, and he and his wife Kayla started a family, he tried to step back from the association, but nobody else was stepping up to take his place.
“I didn’t want that to fall off on my watch, so I kept having meetings, kept trying to do things, would go to the state board meetings, would get information, try to relay that to our people here,” he said. “It was just trying to find people to come aboard, and I think it was a weird transition time for Waco where we had a bunch of chain restaurants, and you weren’t getting the representation from chains to come help, and a lot of your old-school restaurateurs were kind of getting out of the business, and things were changing.”
As more locally owned restaurants began to open in Waco, the association saw an influx of membership. Now the chapter is populated by restaurateurs such as Corey McEntyre, from Red Herring and Milo All Day; Yvette and Phillip Helberg of Helberg Barbecue; Chris Salazar at Shorty’s Pizza Shack; and Massimo Di Campli from Di Campli’s Italian Ristorante.
“I really credit the Waco food scene in general. You start to see it change a little bit, and you start to see more local places open up, whether they were chef-driven or not, people coming from food trucks,” he said. “We’ve been able to get the chapter in a better spot now. I think we’re over 30 or 35 members in the city, and being able to get it in a better spot is because of the relationships that I’ve built with people that are in these restaurants. That’s part of me just going out and getting to eat dinner with people because I think people think we eat at our own restaurants all the time, but I love going out to eat. I love to go visit other restaurants, and I like to build those relationships.”
Building relationships is one thing that Sammy drilled into his son when Kyle was a kid and spending most of his summer working at George’s.
“Dad would say, ‘Go talk to that person.’ And the reason I think I’m comfortable with people is because of that,” Citrano said. “If you don’t know them, go introduce yourself. Go talk to them. And be hospitable. I just want to take care of people. If anybody will tell you anything about me, it’s that I very truly want to take care of people. Whether that’s in our restaurants, outside of our restaurants or my friends.”
Citrano acts as liaison between Waco restaurant operators and the state association, providing guidance and updates as rules and regulations change.
“He is right there at the heart of the Waco restaurant scene, knowing many answers to questions we have as other restaurateurs or connecting us to those that can help,” said Yvette Helberg, co-owner of Helberg Barbecue. “Kyle plays a huge role in the TRA, both locally and statewide. He is a voice to represent us from Waco on a bigger stage and does a phenomenal job leading in his position.”
The Texas Restaurant Association is the “premier business association representing the state’s $138 billion foodservice industry, encompassing upwards of 58,000 establishments and supporting a workforce of 1.5 million Texans,” according to its website. As chair of the Waco chapter of the Association, Citrano automatically has a spot on the association’s statewide board. He’s currently treasurer of the board. He’ll move up to vice chair in January and will become chair of the board in 2028, the 91st anniversary of the association.
It’s important for Waco restaurant operators to have a representative so heavily involved with the state association, said Salazar, managing partner of the Shorty’s Pizza Shack location in Hewitt.
“Now that he’s on the state board, it’s good to have a Waco voice at that level to let them know what’s going on in Waco and bring that information back to us,” Salazar said. “He also has a great relationship with the health department, which has been great for us. We have a regular meeting with them just to get a lot of information on things that they’re looking for, things that we can do better and improve on.”
Citrano credits the association and its president and CEO Dr. Emily Willams Knight with leading the Texas restaurant industry through the pandemic a few years back.
“If it wasn’t for her and her team, restaurants would not have been as successful as we were through COVID,” he said. “When you see places like Chicago that were down for 18 months, and we were down for six weeks, it really helped save our butts.”
Citrano said that one benefit to local restaurants joining the association is the weekly newsletter that keeps food operators up to date on the latest goings-on in Austin and Washington.
“We’re starting to see the impacts that politics have had on restaurants and our industry,” he said. “And it just kind of feels like every year there’s something else that’s coming after you. The more responsibility I feel in my restaurants, the more ownership and the more stuff that you take, you realize that you have to protect your people, you have to protect your business. It’s important that you have that voice and that you speak up and you get involved.”
Citrano has had opportunities to represent the state association at the National Restaurant Association in Washington, and in May, he attended for the first time the National Restaurant Association trade show in Chicago.
“It was amazing,” he said. “My dad had always said I should go and I just never did. And now it’s like, I don’t know how I missed that. There’s so much changing in our industry so fast. And not that everything’s for us. But it really might open your eyes if you take a chance to step back and look. Don’t have the blinders on. Sometimes you’ve got to open them up.”
Citrano realizes that he has a legacy to live up to, not only in Waco but at the state level as well. In fact, Sammy was inducted into the Texas Restaurant Association Hall of Honor in 2022.
“Being an only child and having Sammy Citrano as my father, it’s always going to be big shoes to fill,” Citrano said. “But for me, it’s always just been wanting to prove to people that I wasn’t just his son. I’m a hard worker. I’ve done every job that you can think of in these restaurants. I’ve tried to work my way up and do it the right way, try to take care of people and take care of my city. And I want my legacy to not just be what my dad did. I want to go above and beyond what he did, and he did a lot. And so that’s hard, but that’s my goal. And so to be chair of the association is great. It’s not something he ever did.”
