Nicholas Perkins

Nicholas Perkins built his career around preparing and serving food. In a U.S. Chamber of Commerce interview, he recalled learning from his grandmother's cooking and from a friend's parents who ran a food-service business. At Fayetteville State University, he worked in the campus dining hall. Those experiences led toward a career managing meals for institutions and, later, owning a restaurant franchise business.

Perkins earned a business degree from Fayetteville State in 2003 and an MBA from Howard University in 2013. His company's biography dates the founding of Perkins Management to 2005, built around contract dining for colleges, hospitals and government organizations: providing meals inside other institutions, a different business from running a public restaurant or licensing a brand.

In his Chamber interview, Perkins described an early contract preparing breakfast for roughly forty to fifty people at a mental-health facility, and his push to expand beyond higher education so the company would not depend on one customer sector.

In June 2021, Luby's announced an agreement to sell its Fuddruckers franchise operations to Black Titan Franchise Systems, a Perkins affiliate. Restaurant Dive reported an expected transaction value of $18.5 million and noted that another affiliate already operated Fuddruckers locations. The agreement covered the franchise business rather than ownership of every restaurant location.

AACSB's 2022 profile recognized the completed acquisition and identified Perkins as the first African American to hold full ownership of a national hamburger franchise, noting his interest in creating opportunities for underrepresented franchise owners.

In September 2025, Perkins returned to Fayetteville State for a student-led discussion about entrepreneurship. Students asked about building credibility and sustaining a business, and he talked about planning and persistence on the campus where he had once worked.