Master inventor and salesman: Curtis Carlson

Nation's Restaurant News, March 29, 1993 by Rick Van Warner

MINNEAPOLIS -- Curtis Carlson's eyes lit up as he presented his latest idea to a pair of strangers.

As the affable but intense founder and owner of Carlson Cos. carefully detailed his notion to introduce "Gold Point" award cards to the retail industry, it became clear that he was happiest when selling something.

And it was not ego or boastfulness that led the 78-year-old entrepreneur to talk about creating a card that could earn shoppers points toward merchandise or even frequent-flyer programs. It was that this consummate salesman -- much to the nervous dismay of his P.R. man -- seemingly couldn't resist revealing his secret to outsiders.

"Curt" Carlson still exhibits the verve and aggressiveness he developed peddling his Gold Bond trading stamps program door-to-door to grocers and other merchants in the '40s and '50s. The same salesmanship that helped him parlay modest early success into a $10 billion empire is engrained in his company's culture.

"One of the things I never changed since I began is that we're sales driven," Carlson says proudly. "The guys that are the queen bees around here are the sales guys on the firing line."

Nonetheless, Carlson credits much of the outstanding growth the company has achieved through selling franchises to Juergen Bartels, saying it was "just a lucky break" that he hired Bartels about a decade ago.

"I went the first 23 years of this company and opened up 22 hotels, but I wasn't smart enough to know about franchises," he muses. "I was buying them and getting the biggest mortgage possible.

"But then that little guy [Bartels] comes in. He says, 'We don't have to put in our own money. We should put in the best management team that we can get and then go out and sell our own franchises.' And look what he's done! Now we have 336 hotels."

Carlson quickly took to the hard-driving Bartels, who he says is one of the only people he knows who works harder than he does.

A lifesize statue at the entrance of a museumlike display near the reception area in the company's suburban Minneapolis headquarters portrays a smiling Carlson with briefcase in one hand and the other hand extended for a handshake. But beneath the friendly, almost jovial exterior is a fiercely competitive, demanding man whom several executives described as both very tough and very fair.

As Bartels says of his boss: "He's intense, absolutely goal-driven. His work is his life. He is a taskmaster. But I agree with that. It does not intimidate me."

He remains very involved, still working about 40 Saturdays a year, according to Bartels. While Carlson Hospitality has enjoyed 117 straight months of profit growth, its founder is constantly charging ahead to improve the record.

"We have big plans going forward," Carlson says, smiling broadly. "It's moving so much faster that it's hard today to plan for five years, so now we plan for three. We've finally started to look global.

"I know what the future's going to be if I have my way."

After talking about the expansion of Radisson hotels and TGI Friday's to Eastern Europe, he chuckles when recalling a warning he received back when he purchased six Friday's restaurants and the rights to the concept in 1975.

"We were told that one of the problems we should know before we bought it was that there was only room for 60 Friday's in the U.S. The owner said because of the demographics of who comes to us, there was only room in the major cities."

"We put down our 60th city and then put one in here and another there. Now we've got a small one going into the smaller cities to open in maybe another 100 to 200 cities. We call them greenhouses!"

Before he ever heard of Friday's, Carlson ran Haberdashery restaurants in the Minneapolis area. While the gourmet hamburger-fern bar concept was moderately successful, it never took off.

Later came Country Kitchen. Carlson was initially approached when the company operated fewer than 10 restaurants, and while he liked the name, he felt the profit potential was too low. But years later he bought the chain, which by now was much larger.

"When they came back, they had a couple of hundred restaurants that were busy," Carlson recalls. "The sales were there, but they weren't making any money. I thought it was a case of poor accounting or management. So I thought I was smart enough to take those restaurants, but then we bought it and we never made any money either!"

But today the all-franchised chain, which has been refurbished and updated over the past few years, is doing well, he points out.

"Restaurants are kind of a dangerous business. A lot of them go pretty good; then after a while they die fast. You have to get them [customers] so they don't get tired of coming here.

"I'd say that most restaurants today shouldn't try to be a general restaurant. Let the customer decide where he wants to go; don't try to be all things to all people."

A modest billionaire, Carlson is always quick to credit lucky breaks for his phenomenal success. He says it was "just luck" that he fell into the hotel business in 1960, at a time when the trading stamp business was beginning to lose its luster.