Herman's head

American Visions, April-May, 1995 by Eric K. Washington

Although African Americans were prevalent in the food service and catering industries century and a half ago, many blacks reserve a disdain for the trade today, seeing it as a throwback to a time when all they were sanctioned to do was serve. Not Herman Cain, who this May completes his yearlong presidency of the National Restaurant Association (NRA). He is here to testify that food service can be as creative and enterprising a road as any for blacks seeking the top of the food chain.

In the 76-year history of what is the food service industry's leading trade organization, Cain is the first black president. He assumed leadership last year, during the volatile debate over President Clinton's national health care reform plan, which Cain decried as "business- and public-unfriendly." Arguing that the proposal would ultimately defeat its noble objective, Cain dispelled any notion that his organization and its constituency, which comprise 25,000 member companies that operate 150,000 establishments nationwide, were merely a coffee klatch. "The food service industry represents nearly 5 percent of the gross domestic product," he says. "We employ close to 10 million people, which is a little over 9 percent of the total American work force."

Cain's colleagues praise his ability to summon a collective voice, from the organization's boardrooms to its rank and file, on pertinent issues. Some point to Cain's brainchild: the Better Impact the Elected, or BITE Back, hot line and card. His weekly taped messages apprise association members of dire issues or current legislation, such as music licensing, business meal deductibility and smoking ordinances. The messages encourage NRA members to con ct their respective congressional representatives, who are listed on their cards.

The 49-year-old Cain credits a single overriding principle--"focus, focus, focus"--for his successes. Speaking with the sermonic lilt of an inspired politician, he stresses the necessity of "identifying a goal and being willing to work as hard as necessary to achieve that goal." But he also allows, with a personal example, that "the goal may change." In 1982, with degrees in mathematics and computer science under his belt, he had attained the vice presidency of corporate systems and services for the Pillsbury Company. Suddenly, however, the young executive had a hankering to learn the burger business. In an unconventional move, Cain tossed aside his corporate hat to work at a Minneapolis Burger King (a Pillsbury subsidiary), determined to learn from, well, the ground round up.

The irony is that one of the Atlanta native's childhood experiences had not instilled in him a distaste for restaurants and burgers. At 7 years old, with enough coins squirreled together for him and some friends to purchase a coveted "store-bought hamburger," Cain recalls being ushered out of an establishment to the "colored" door in the rear. "We thought it was the door for hamburgers," he says. But Cain utilizes such unpleasant reminders of where he came from as grist for "the real engine that drives any form of success."

So, in typical fashion, Cain needed only nine months to re-ascend, to become the Burger King Corporation's Philadelphia regional vice president, soon transforming the company's worst-performing area into its best. Duly impressed, the Pillsbury Company subsequently appointed Cain in 1986 as president of its beleaguered Godfather's Pizza subsidiary. Profits rose in less than a year. Two years later, Cain, with some of his senior management colleagues, purchased the pizza chain from Pillsbury. Today, he is the president and chief executive officer of Godfather's Pizz Inc., the nation's fifth-largest pizza chain.

"I can't think of any other industry, where a young man like myself could have reached the point of not only being the CEO of a corporation," says Cain, "but of having a major ownership interest in [it]."

Cain insists that blacks "get over" the idea that the food service trade is a menial, dead-end job. Retail trade censuses indicate a continual rise in minority-owned eating and drinking establishments, which represent about a fifth of all such businesses in the United States. And an NRA survey last year noted that more than 60 percent of current restaurant owners and managers started out in hourly positions, such as bussers, servers, prep cooks and, like Cain, dishwashers. "Even higher education is not necessarily required in order to achieve success," Cain notes.

A goal, a drive to work hard and a lot of self-esteem --that's the dish Herman Cain is recommending today.

Eric K. Washington, a freelance writer in New York City, is no stranger to the food service industry. He was presented by the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau with its 1991 Tourism Industry Services Award in the restaurant category.