The Life and Times of a Serial Restaurateur

By iUniverse

Are you who you were born to be? The trials and tribulations of growing from cook trainee to being a major player in building and selling seven fairly large companies. The journey is humorous, mentally and physically challenging, and very rewarding both personally and financially. Learning the art of people development was one of my greatest joys in life. I believe that I am who I was born to be, and I am very blessed for having made the journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532015670

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Copyright © 2017 Roy L. Jones.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-1568-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-1567-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017901041

iUniverse rev. date: 01/23/2017

Contents

Are You Who You Were Born to Become?

The Life and Times of A Serial Restaurateur

1969 – 1970. Lost in New Orleans

1970 – 1972. Left Unattended

1972 – 1974. Wendy’s Getting Aggressive

1974 – 1977. Strong Learning Curve

The Story of Wendy’s Old-Fashioned Hamburgers

1977. Corporate Environment

Your Most Important Asset: People

Cost Culture

1978 – 1980. Country Roy’s and Po Folk’s

1980 – 1986. Po Folks

Pieus Unum Moonus

1986 – 1988. Moving North

1990 – 1996. Going Home

1995 to 1996

1996 – 2000. Creative

1996 to 2000 In My Element

2000 – 2013. In My Element

2013 – 2014. Uncle Bud’s Revitalized

Are You Who You Were Born to Become?

Let me tell you a story about a man that won the blue ribbon at the county fair by having the most unusually shaped pumpkin. The pumpkin was shaped exactly like a gallon jar. His friend patted him on the back and said, Congratulations, you’re so lucky to be able to win that award, that blue ribbon, that’s really something. The young man said, "There is not really much to it, you see, you plant a tiny pumpkinseed and within that tiny seed anything can happen. If you put it in fertile soil, water it and make sure it gets plenty of sunlight, that pumpkin can grow to be 500 to 700 pounds, or the size of a gallon jug, it all depends on the number of restrictions you put on the pumpkin as it begins to grow.

"When you plant the seed in fertile ground and water and give it plenty of sunlight, a vine will begin to grow. As that vine grows, the end of it will produce a little yellow flower. When the petals fall off of the little yellow flower, there is a small round baby pumpkin about the size of a pencil eraser. If you take that end of the vine and put it into a clear gallon jug, the pumpkin will fill the inside of that jug completely as it grows. You see, it gets all of the nutrients and water it needs from the roots of the vine, and it gets the sunlight through the clear gallon jug.

When the pumpkin has filled the gallon jug, all you have to do is remove the gallon jug, cut the pumpkin loose from the vine and you have a pumpkin shaped exactly like a gallon jug. Not much to it, really."

Some people are like the pumpkin in the way they grow mentally to the size and shape of the container within which they store their beliefs. Most of these beliefs were formed in childhood by well-meaning loving parents and friends. It’s a real shame that so many people have a container the size of a medicine bottle. The size of that medicine bottle restricts their growth as human beings.

It is my opinion that the majority of the people on this earth restrict themselves by not understanding that they have a belief system that holds them back. The average person is not necessarily supposed to be average. This is my place in life and I accept it. Me personally, I can never accept that. I am not a pumpkin.

There are people all over the world in abusive relationships, both men and women, who do not do anything about it because of some belief that stuck in the back of their minds that they do not even realize is there. Let me tell you something I know is a fact. GOD did not put us on this earth to be abused in any way mentally, physically or spiritually. Write that one down, and believe it, because it is an absolute fact.

Please don’t misunderstand me. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being the number one washer crammar on the third shift at the Nissan assembly plant. Someone has to be the number one washer crammar on the third shift at the Nissan assembly plant, and it may be you. If it is, be the very best that you can be at what you are doing, and never back up. Maybe before you can be the supervisor on the number two assembly line, you have to first be the number one washer crammar on the third shift. I don’t know. But what I’m really sure of is that people put self-imposed restrictions on their life by not understanding that they have a belief system within themselves that needs to be challenged. YOU ARE NOT A PUMPKIN.

If you want to change your life, you are the only one that can make that change.

Take a look at all the things that you think you cannot do, but would like to do. Search out those beliefs one at a time. Start small, then build up to the larger ones. Take them on one at a time and begin to grow; prepare to become what GOD put you here to become.

This book is a chronicle of my growth as a person and a professional. I put NO restrictions or limitations on myself. I never have.

I AM NOT A PUMPKIN.

The Life and Times of A Serial Restaurateur

Let me preface this by sharing with you that since the time I was very young I wanted to be a soldier in the United States Army. When I graduated from high school, I went directly into the Army and wound up with a very special group of people. After five years of the most incredible learning experiences of my life, I decided to leave the United States Army.

At the ripe old age of 24, I then had to begin all over again from scratch. If you are 24 years old that sounds like a really big deal, but it really isn’t. What do I do with myself, how do I buy my bologna? My mind was a little off kilter after those five years of being sent around the world to do what they trained me to do. Little did I know that a lot of those life lessons I had learned in the service would be my greatest assets in civilian life. I am by nature physically and mentally aggressive. No matter what I get into or what I do, I have to be one of the best no matter what it takes. Being average has never been an option. Average means in the middle, the middle is as close to the bottom as it is the top. I cannot live with that.

I gathered some of my friends together at a Shoney’s Big Boy one day to discuss my dilemma. My friends all had chosen professions by now and were progressing with those careers. They kept asking me, What can you do? They never really truly understood my answer: Whatever any human being that has ever walked on this earth has done, I can do it. My friend Bob Bailey was sitting there as the manager stopped by, overhearing our conversation. He said, I have a job that you won’t be able to do. My interest peaked at being challenged, so I asked him, What job would that be?

Short Order Cook. I don’t think you can last two weeks.

My thinking was I could stand on my head for two weeks if that’s all it took to prove a point. I had my interview and the Manager set up another interview with the Vice President of Operations for the next day. I had an interview with the Vice President, then he and the Manager talked in the office. I heard them talking through the door. The Vice President said, He looks like a roughneck to me, rough around the edges, I would not hire him.

The Manager said, When is the last time you looked into a mirror? The Vice President said, Okay, but when he does not work out, it will all be on you. That was my second challenge in two day’s. I would not fail. They started me to work on Tuesday, my first day in the restaurant business.

Big Boy Day, every Tuesday from 4 o’clock until closing, Big Boy hamburgers were half price. At that time, a Big Boy hamburger cost $.49. That meant on Tuesdays, from 4 o’clock to close, they were $.25. I have never seen so many hamburgers in my whole life. We sold thousands of them on Tuesday nights.

The Vice President was the only one that could keep up with the volume, wrapping the hamburgers and putting them in the window for the drive-in side. He came to that unit every Tuesday evening just to demonstrate how it was done. They put me on the grill to begin with on that side of the restaurant. We made hamburgers as fast as humanly possible. It certainly was different from anything I had ever done in my life.

About 9 o’clock that night the Vice President looked over at me and said, Why don’t you take a break. I replied, I will take a break when you take a break. He just laughed, and we kept working.

About 10 o’clock, the Vice President walked over to me, put his arm around my shoulder, and said, "Come on, let’s go have a cigarette. Thus began what turned out to be a very strong friendship over the long term. Of course, my friend Bob Bailey had come by to watch me through the window and see how I fared. My friends seemed to take great pleasure in coming by and sitting in the dining room, to watch me working in the kitchen with my little chef hat and scarf on. They appeared to derive a great deal of pleasure from watching me work.

I did not know until many years later how fortunate I had been to have started my restaurant career in that particular restaurant. In those days, we made everything from scratch: Beef Stew, Spaghetti Sauce, Salad Dressings, Strawberry Glaze, Onion Rings, Shrimp and Oysters, Hot Fudge Cakes— and all the rest. Everything was made in the back of that restaurant. We ground up day-old bread in a buffalo chopper to mix with cracker meal to make breading for everything on the menu that required breading. We even made the pie shells from scratch. I had the opportunity to learn the food part of the business from the very basics, from the ground up.

One day when I had been there about three weeks, about 130 or 2 o’clock in the afternoon, we were busier than normal. I was by myself on the front line, doing all I could to keep up. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a man in a suit standing there with his arms folded and watching me. I immediately told him, in a very direct tone, "You either