Michael Coles

(1944 - )

Temple member Michael J. Coles is an Atlanta business executive, serial entrepreneur, education advocate, and well-known public speaker. After more than nineteen years in the clothing business, he co-founded the Great American Cookie Company in Atlanta in 1977 with $8,000 and grew it into the largest cookie store franchise in the United States.

Coles’s story of personal perseverance is as impressive as his business acumen. Following a near-fatal motorcycle accident five weeks after founding the company, he recovered through a self-styled rehabilitation program and went on to set records in three World Transcontinental Bicycling events. In recognition of his success, Kennesaw State University in 1994 renamed its college of business the Michel J. Coles College of Business. Coles’s commitment to community service led him to run for the House of Representatives against Newt Gingrich in 1996 and the US Senate against Paul Coverdell in 1998, the same year he sold Great American Cookies.

For the next four years, he chaired the Georgia Film Commission and served on the University System of Georgia Board of Regents, the Kennesaw State University Foundation Board, and the Walker School Board. In 2003, he took the helm at Caribou Coffee Company and more than doubled the size of the company, opened a commercial sales division and an international market, and took it public on NASDAQ under the symbol CBOU in 2005.

Today, he serves as chairman of Brand Holding Company and Brand Bank and actively lectures about business, giving more than seventy-five talks a year at universities and corporate events nationwide. He and his wife, Donna, have been active Temple members for years, and in 2017 he co-chaired The Temple Endowment Campaign with Jim Grien. He is currently writing his memoir, Time to Get Tough, with Dr. Catherine Lewis.