An appetite for more than pizza

Nation's Business, Feb, 1986 by Susan Ager

Bob Popiolek remembers how Tom Monaghan used to drag himself home from his pizza shop about 3 a.m., carrying the night's receipts in a brown paper bag. He would finally get around to counting the cash the next afternoon at the kitchen table in his trailer home.

"Funny, but it seemed like a burden to him, like the fun was in the work, not the money," says Popiolek, who lived in the same Ypsilanti, Mich., trailer park and swapped friendly wagers with Monaghan about who would build the tallest building, make the most money, win the most fame.

They have not seen each other in almost 20 years, but Popiolek is willing to concede that Thomas S. Monaghan, 48, founder of Domino's Pizza, the world's largest privately held restaurant chain, won each bet.

From near-bankruptcy in 1970, the chain fought its way back to solvency--and more. Revenues were $98 million in 1980. The slogan at Domino's in the past year was "One-point-five in '85." That is $1.5 billion in sales and franchise royalties, more than double the 1984 figure. The company's 1985 report, due out in March, will reveal that Domino's met its goal. (Although closely held, Domino's is very public about its finances, in a "we-have-nothing-to-hide" spirit that Monaghan promotes. It publishes annual reports, distributed to each employee, corporate friends and bankers. The 1984 report came in a polished walnut box that also contained real dominoes.)

In 1984 Monaghan had an estimated worth of $200 million; in 1985 he was worth $50 million more. Domino's is expanding at the rate of 21 stores each week. The days of cash in brown paper bags are over, as evidenced by these Monaghan milestones:

* Having aspired to be a Detroit Tiger shortstop as a kid, he instead bought the team in October, 1983, for $53 million after a 92-70 season in which it placed second in the American League East. The team won the World Series in 1984 and netted just under $4 million, a probable season record for major league baseball teams. National awareness of the company, say Domino's executives, has since grown from 41 percent to 78 percent, in part because of the Tigers but also because of network TV advertising, begun late in 1984.

* In December, in time for the company's 25th anniversary gala, the first phase of a $300 million office complex called Domino's Farms opened in Ann Arbor, Mich., Monaghan's birthplace. The complex is intended as a tribute to architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who tops Monaghan's long list of heroes. It will include a 30-story tower based on Wright's unbuilt Golden Beacon design. "It's going to be a loser, economically," Monaghan admits, "but I won't compromise on the design. No public company would ever build anything like this. My theory is that because no one else will do it, it's going to be unique, and it's going to endure."

The complex will eventually house not only Domino's world headquarters, but also a sports medicine center, an employee fitness center, a man-made lake, jogging trails (ski trails in winter) and a 150-acre working farm that will include a pumpkin patch open to locals each fall. A team of Polish monks is being recruited to run the farm. Monaghan would also like to open a small orphanage on the property, staffed by senior citizens.

Devoted to home and family, Monaghan is expanding his own house, more than tripling its size at an expected cost of $2 million. All remodeling will be in Frank Lloyd Wright style, including a balcony cantilevered over a wooded gulch. The enlarged home, in an affluent but unostentatious neighborhood near Ann Arbor, will have a seven-car garage, an indoor pool, a Nautilus gym as big as a two-car garage and a copper roof over it all. Because Monaghan's wife, Marjorie, forbids him to borrow money for the project, it is being paid for in cash. She is a bashful, unassuming woman who still does the company payroll (her pay: $15,000 a year), does all the family's cooking and refuses to buy a fur despite urgings from her friends. Neither will she allow reporters to interview their four daughters, aged 14 through 22, or come to their home.

Tom Monaghan grew up a poor boy, son of a truck driver and an aspiring nurse. After his father died when he was 4, Monaghan's mother, Anna, went back to school for her degree and worked as a nurse, placing Tom and his younger brother, Jim, in a Catholic home for boys and later in various foster homes and work farms near Jackson, Mich. At one point, Tom was expelled from a high school seminary for mischief.

Tom graduated (from a different high school) at the bottom of his class, then joined the Marines, saving his money to go to college. But he was bilked by a con man promising profits on nonexistent oil wells. Penniless but undaunted, he enrolled twice at the University of Michigan, hoping to study architecture, but dropped out each time after three weeks. Once, he didn't have the money for books; once, he didn't have the time (working bit jobs) to study. Monaghan never went back to school.