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The original Colonial Inn menu
After World War II, as the US economy and work force gradually expanded, companies grew and prospered and newly hired workers assumed that they had obtained lifetime jobs. The US economy was thriving at a time when Europe and Asia were desperately trying to rebuild after the near total devastation brought about by a horribly destructive war.
I personally began to get the message right after we were married. At the time Nancy and I were in pretty bad shape financially. My father-in-law, Dr. Nichol, had given us three hundred dollars and his 1941 Chrysler. He had paid for Nancy’s room and board at Cornell through the end of the spring semester, which helped. I was able to earn a little bit of money working at odd jobs, but I wasn’t able to save much of anything. If there would be anything at all coming from the sale of the farm, it wouldn’t come for a while.
These were financially tough times to be sure, but things were going to work out. I felt sure of that. I was prepared to expect that my future in the business world was going to be full of tough times. I felt that in order to become a success in life I had better figure out a way to deal with unexpected reversals and disappointments. I was already looking at my first one: I had taken on a wife, I had no money, I was still in college while trying to pay for it, I had no job and no prospects for one, and I was looking at a bleak job market where millions of returning servicemen were among the competition.
It was obvious that I had done a pretty poor job of planning. I was determined to do a better job in the future.
I believe that one of the cardinal rules of success is planning. So far as personal and business planning is concerned, this starts with preparing a budget, itemizing assets and liabilities, and projecting income and expenses. It is surprising to me how little thought is given to the simple listing of these numbers, but without them there is very little discipline in spending and the utilization of resources. In short, there is no plan at all.
I put myself on the verge of going broke four times in my life, mostly when I was young and just starting out. Looking back, I recognize that I was hasty, impetuous, and often guilty of jumping to conclusions.
My advice to young people starting out today would be to get really familiar and comfortable with numbers and learn how to use them. We have taken this approach with the Burger King organization since 1954. This is a company that puts people from all walks of life into a business which most of them have never experienced before. We try to teach financial discipline and fiscal planning. Still, I have seen very smart people fail in a franchise that should have been enormously successful simply because they didn’t plan properly.
Nancy and I followed many leads for jobs, but we were really concerned that we couldn’t see any promising opportunities anywhere. After a fruitless trip to Pittsburgh, Nancy and I returned to Ithaca to resume the frustrating task of trying to find work. After weeks of waiting, I finally received an encouraging response to an application I had submitted The YMCA in Wilmington, Delaware, was looking for a person to take over as their director of food service, and I was invited to come down for an interview. It didn’t take me long to pack. I took off from Ithaca in late August of 1947.
The job looked very challenging to me despite the meager pay of $267 a month. The YMCA operated the largest cafeteria in Delaware, with a soda shop on the main floor. Above the cafeteria kitchen and bakeshop were several floors of banquet rooms, each of which was equipped with a booster kitchen serviced by an elevator from the main kitchen below. A staff of about thirty employees was needed to operate this complex facility.
I desperately wanted to land this job. I needed to get to work and start earning a living. The job itself was not intimidating because I knew that, given a chance, I could do it. I wanted an opportunity to prove myself, and I felt very confident about my ability to demonstrate that I was up to the task.
After the interview I headed back to Ithaca where Nancy was waiting anxiously to find out what had happened. I told her about the interview and described the cafeteria, the food-service facilities, and the people I had met. She could easily see how excited I was at the prospect. The people at “the Y” had told me that they would make their decision soon.
The wait seemed interminable, but a call finally came and with it the offer of the job I had so anxiously sought. I was asked to report as soon as possible. We packed our personal possessions, put them in the car, and headed for Wilmington.
Within twenty-four hours of our arrival in Wilmington, two events took place that reminded both of us that we weren’t out of the woods yet. Our car was broken into in the hotel’s parking lot and all of our personal possessions of any real value were stolen. Then I began to develop some severe shooting pains in my lower back. The pain became so intense that the only relief I seemed to be able to get was by standing in the hotel room shower and letting very hot water run down my back. When I did report, I was ready, excited, enthusiastic, and determined to do well. This was my first big chance and I had every intention of making it a success.
Although I was excited, I was aware that life for Nancy must have been pretty dull at the time. She was expecting our first child and I know that her mind must have been occupied with prospect of becoming a mother. I was in constant admiration of her positive spirit. In all the years of our marriage, I have never known Nancy to let things get her down.
The cafeteria operation at the Wilmington YMCA was in a disastrous state of affairs when I got there. Even though I had never worked in a restaurant before, it was obvious to me that the inventory was totally out of control and the employees were uninspired and lacking in direction. The staff was not focused on providing the highest standards of food quality and customer satisfaction that I thought we should be delivering. The menu was unimaginative and there were no plans in effect to study costs, develop efficiencies, and target profitability.
As an example, the building manager had allocated two large areas for the cafeteria’s use in storing supplies. Both areas were stacked high with canned goods and paper supplies, and it took me three days to complete my first inventory, which was ridiculous given the size of the operation. Some of the supplies dated back over ten years. Cans were exploding in their cases because they had been kept in storage for such a long time. It was a classic case of an ill-advised “Last In, First Out” inventory control process. I could tell that I wouldn’t need to order much in the way of non-perishables during my first few months on the job.
My first job was to unload that bloated inventory, and the best way to do that was to create appetizing meals and sell them as cheaply as I could. In doing that I was able to offer our customers great value. Because of this, we began to attract new business and we were able to reduce the inventory quickly. Within a few months I was able to return these two storeroom areas to the building manager, who couldn’t believe that we didn’t need them any longer.
When I arrived at the Y as its new director, I was pleased to learn that an assistant manager was already in place. Mrs. Kelley was a dietitian by training. She was a very proper, pleasant woman, but I was troubled by the fact that she was always working at her desk in the little office we shared right off the cafeteria’s main floor.
She spent most of her day recording information in ledger books, three or four dozen of which lined the walls of our office. One day I asked her what this was all about and she explained that she had always recorded information from our purveyor invoices about the cost and specifications of the food we were purchasing over the years. She pointed proudly to the fact that she had posted this kind of information and that she could recall how much the YMCA had paid for goods and supplies going back as far as a quarter of a century. As far as I was concerned this was totally useless information. She acknowledged that the bookkeeping department kept all of our invoices after paying them, so I saw no reason to produce this kind of supplementary data.
I thought she should have been spending more time in the kitchen and on the serving line. I picked up the phone, called the building manager, and asked him to send a laundry truck. One of his men arrived a few minutes later and I asked him to put all of Mrs. Kelley’s record books into the laundry truck. I took the ledger she had in front of her and put that on top of the rest of the ledgers. Then I removed all of her desk