Roads To Success 10.2

Epilogue:  Jerry Caven

Regrettably, Jerry Caven was not available for the “follow-up” interview that would bring his story up to date for this series.  There is really no mystery in his lack of availability, though.  He is just a really, really busy guy.

Jerry still actively serves as Chairman of the Board for the Royal Fork Restaurant Corporation and is President of States Realty.  He is also President of First Consultants, Inc., a company he established in 1978 supplying wholesale restaurant equipment to the industry he knows well.

Jerry is, of course, actively involved in growing his latest restaurant venture, Mongo’s Grill.  A bit of internet detective work revealed that these restaurants are receiving predominately glowing reviews with their “healthy” menu selection, excellent service, and cleanliness being just a few of the attributes singled out in numerous posts.

One thing is for certain, a follow-up interview is not required to know that Jerry Caven still fervently pursues his faith daily.  He lives his personal life and life as a business executive according to biblical principles, and he serves God regularly with his time, money and resources.  He does all this actively and deliberately with great purpose.

Thank you, Jerry, for permission to use your story.  It is truly a great example of how to journey through life.

Roads To Success 9.2

The Man In Charge

Jerry Caven credits his employees with making possible something that he and Muriel consider a priority in their lives - ministry work.

“I don’t have to worry that they will lose their motivation or that they need to be challenged to do their jobs every day.  They have done it for ten, fifteen, thirty or forty years,” Jerry explained.  “That gives me a great deal of confidence then that I can leave to do ministry work.”

Jerry and Muriel have dedicated their time and resources to ministry work in Central America, India, Pakistan, Africa, Bangladesh, and of course, the United States.

“I explain to our people, when my wife and I go to do ministry work, each time before we leave, that they are as important to the ministry as we are.  We are the ones who go, but they are the ones who make it possible for us to go,” Jerry told the Secrets Of Success camera.

Jerry and Muriel’s ministry work is not confined to just writing checks.  Shortly before production began on their Secrets Of Success television episode Jerry and Muriel had spent six months in India.  They were “hands on” in distributing food to the hungry, meeting with local church pastors and educating anyone interested in learning about the Christian faith.

Faith obviously plays a key role in the Caven’s interest in ministry, and as already mentioned it holds a primary position in Jerry’s varied businesses.  Jerry may own the company but he will be the first to tell you that God runs it.

The Royal Fork Restaurant Corporation Chief Financial Officer, Jim Chambers, illustrated it this way, “Jerry basically does everything with prayer.  He prays about whatever it is he is about to do, and the first person he asks about anything is God.”

“The way we do business, in terms the way people are treated, in terms of the expectations of what goes on in any of our businesses, it’s obvious that faith makes up a huge part of it,” Merlyn Knight added.  “And then we’re challenged to do more than just make money.  How do we change people?  How do we make a difference in people’s lives?

Before Jerry Caven decided he wanted to spend less time at work, his combined businesses were producing annual revenues in excess of $100 million dollars.  Even now, with Jerry focusing more time on ministry work, and his 5 children and 14 grandchildren, his businesses produce in the ballpark of $75 million annually.  These are impressive numbers attached to a man whose early ambitions were downright mundane.

“I’ve only had one conscious asset goal,” Jerry recalled.  “When I was fourteen or fifteen years old I determined that someday I would have a home with a fireplace.  That is the only financial or material goal I can ever remember having.  I have just worked hard and it just seemed like you should do your best.  I believe that a person who is in business just for the money, and then does not give back either some of his money or his life in the process, he is missing out on a huge blessing.”

“Jerry’s been so successful because he thinks through what he’s going to do,” Muriel said of her husband.  “He just seems to have a knack of picking the right businesses and the right people.  Honesty and integrity and his reliance on what he feels like God would have him do; it plays a big role in his decisions.”

And what is Jerry Caven’s opinion on his success?  “For some reason our success in business is that the Lord intended it; this is what He wants and desires and why that would be I don’t understand,” he told our camera.

Make no mistake; Jerry isn’t advocating that anyone relax while God takes care of business.  “From a human standpoint you can’t just sit and want to be in business and say that the Lord will bring success to us but not do our part,” Jerry expounded.  “From a human standpoint we have been consistent in the principles of business that we believe in.  We have represented the values and integrity [of the Bible].  I think that if a person was starting a business and wanted to be successful in that business, one thing I would tell him is to go to the Bible and to read and understand the concepts that are put forth there.  It tells us how to treat people and if you do that [practice the concepts of the Bible] you will be successful.”

Roads To Success 8.2

Beyond Family

Jerry Caven’s heartfelt concern for family extends well beyond his own family.  “As in any business, really the key to it is the people you employ,” he stated.  “In our other businesses and ranching we’ve been very fortunate to have good people.”

Juan Guitterez first met Jerry Caven on the Pitch Fork, a ranch Jerry owned prior to purchasing the Half Moon Ranch.  Jerry happened to be working on a fence that needed repair when Juan, in need of a job, approached him.  At the time the Pitch Fork didn’t need any additional staff, but when Jerry understood just how badly Juan needed a job he didn’t have the heart to turn him away.

“He cares about you, he cares about your family,” Juan told the Secrets Of Success camera.  “He’s making sure that when I get old I won’t just be sitting in a chair without any money.”

Juan Guitterez worked so hard that he eventually became the foreman of the Pitch Fork Ranch.  In a display of appreciation for his foreman’s hard work, Jerry requested that Juan sign a contract that would give him a percentage of the proceeds should the ranch ever be sold.  Juan signed and Jerry eventually did sell the Pitch Fork.

“When Jerry sold the ranch that percentage resulted in a six-figure profit,” Juan gratefully related.  “I put it in my savings account.”

Jerry has also joyfully paid for Juan’s children’s college expenses.  And many more of Jerry Caven’s twelve-hundred employees have benefited in a variety of ways from his faith-fueled generosity and compassion.

“Hopefully they are happy and paid well,” Jerry commented.  “But when life’s circumstances come up it is my job to be there for these people.”

Many business owners might be tempted to view Jerry’s extra mile approach to employees as unnecessary.  But no one can dispute that it has a long-term practical affect.

“It didn’t take me long to understand when I started in business that constant turnover was costing me a lot of time and a lot of money,” Jerry related.  “The best way was to find a good person that was willing to learn his job, and enjoy his job, and then to remunerate and challenge that person to stay long-term.”

Jerry consistently reminds his employees that they are a big part of the success of the company.  “That might not affect all of them but there are some that really take it to heart,” Jerry said.  “Our people know that I’m not concerned just that they do a good job, but that they know I’m concerned for them individually.”

Merlyn Knight, President of the Royal Fork Restaurant Corporation has been with the company for over forty years, Jim Chambers, Chief Financial Officer, eighteen years.  Diane, Jerry’s assistant, has been with him for thirty-five years.  Business experts might be tempted to question the approach, but there is no debating the results.  The proof here is in the people.

Roads To Success 7.2

What Really Counts

As highly as Jerry values land, he places an even higher value on people.

 “We are Christians and strongly believe in the concepts of the Bible,” Jerry explained.  “And the Bible clearly points out what we are to do with people and for people.”

Where people are concerned family, of course, comes first.  On my first trip to Boise Jerry was driving us to see his home when he related a very unique and entertaining story that beautifully illustrated the strength of his values, and how much he cared for his family.  The story never made it into Jerry Caven’s television episode, but not because it wasn’t worth telling.

It began with Jerry describing how the house we were about to visit came to be.  In the late 1970s, with five children growing strong, the Caven house had managed to shrink around the family.  Business was thriving, and they had the cash, so Jerry and Muriel decided it would be practical to design and build a new, larger home.

Jerry recalled the process as starting with the basics, but then the inevitable began to happen.  Muriel would comment that it would be nice to have a family room at the top of the main staircase and then Jerry would see the advantage of having a home office off the main hallway.

Jerry was a little apologetic and even a little embarrassed as he described how large the house became.  “It was never intended to be such a big project but you get ideas, then more ideas, and I guess it just kind of got out of hand,” he reminisced.  “Anyway, we ended up with this fourteen-thousand-square-foot house.  We had it decorated and furnished, and then moved in.”

The Cavens had not been in the newly constructed house too long before Jerry began to observe something he didn’t feel particularly good about.  “I don’t think my kids had ever thought about how much we had before.  You know, I don’t think they gave any thought to my assets or how much money I earned,” Jerry explained.  “But then we’re all in this big house and after a while I didn’t like the way they were acting.  We were all developing an attitude that I didn’t like.  Even Muriel and I started to forget our priorities.”

After giving the issue a great deal of thought and prayer, Jerry took action.  “I didn’t tell anybody, not even my wife, and I went out and bought a normal-sized house,” Jerry recalled.  “Then I invited my wife to lunch.”

Muriel wryly recalled that upon receiving her husband’s lunch invitation she thought he was going to ask for a divorce.  There was absolutely no tangible reason for her to believe such a thing, but during this period of their lives Jerry was extremely busy and spending a large amount of his time at work; he rarely invited Muriel to lunch because his schedule didn’t allow it.

Jerry explained his observations and concerns to Muriel over lunch.  “I told her how I felt about the kids, their attitude and all,” he recounted.  “She knew what I was talking about and agreed.  So, we left the big house and moved into this other house I bought.  I hired a caretaker to stay in the big house and we were gone for twenty years.”

In August of 1999 Jerry and Muriel moved back into the house they had built twenty years before.  They never considered moving out of this beautiful home a sacrifice.  Their love for their children, concern that their children develop healthy values and maintaining their own healthy perspective was simply more important.

Roads To Success 6.2

At Home On The Range

Seeing the potential in real estate early in his business career, Jerry Caven bankrolled property purchases from his chain of Royal Fork Buffet restaurants.  And real estate investments have proven as successful as the restaurant business for him.

“As our business grew our involvement in real estate grew,” Jerry told the Secrets Of Success camera.  “And we went to purchasing a duplex to purchasing a five-hundred unit apartment house.  So the real estate part of our business grew as fast as we could take the cash out of the restaurants.”

Today, Jerry considers the bare land he began buying years ago to be one of his greatest assets.  “That land we purchased over the last twenty-five years is the basis for the real estate that we now develop,” he explained.

Jerry’s company begins with the bare land and subdivides it.  Then his construction firm builds houses on the lots that his real estate company sells.  But there is one kind of land that attracts Jerry Caven like no other.

“I’ve always been interested in farming and ranching,” Jerry revealed.  “We bought one ranch, one farm and then another one, and another one.  After a few years they started to add up to a whole lot of farms and ranches.”

One of the most enjoyable aspects of shooting Jerry Caven’s episode of the series was the opportunity to take part in an honest-to-goodness cattle drive on the Caven-owned Half Moon Ranch.  This particular ranch consists of approximately 100,000 acres and runs 1,200 head of mother cows.

The Half-Moon Ranch is just one of several ranches that Jerry owns.  About four-thousand acres of it are dedicated to farming.  Alfalfa, corn and grass are grown to feed both cattle and horses.

“We are mainly in the cow-calf business,” Jerry described the operation.  “That is where you view the cow as a manufacturing plant, and its product is a calf.  We calve every winter in January, February and March and then we send those calves and their mothers to the mountains over the summertime.”

By the time the calves are returned to the lowlands in the fall they weigh approximately 650 pounds.  The next step is to sell them to a feedlot.  Jerry described the next step.  “The feed lot feeds the calves grain and fatten them up to fourteen-hundred pounds, and then they go to the slaughterhouse and into the grocery store.

Moving the cattle from the ranch to the mountains in the spring, and then back to the ranch in the fall calls for a good, old-fashioned cattle drive.  The cowboy life has largely disappeared from the western United States, a casualty of modern technology.  Most ranches today use four-wheel drive vehicles and even helicopters to herd cattle, but not the cowboys on the Half-Moon Ranch.

“We’re still in the west and we still run our ranch like the old west,” Jerry assured.  “On our cattle drives we use horses and we don’t take branding chutes with us or chutes to catch them in or doctor them.  We still use a rope.”

Juan Guitterez, foreman of the Half Moon ranch, offered his feelings about this aspect of ranch life.  “The air is fresh, nice and cool.  It’s one of the things I really enjoy the most, coming up here and moving cattle.”

“Herding cattle is a team sport,” Jerry elaborated.  “You have to feel what the other people are doing, where they’re at, what they’re going to do.  “It’s working together.  It’s an extremely difficult job but it’s a job everybody wants to do.”

Muriel Caven provided another perspective on her husband’s love of ranching.  “Well, I think it’s peaceful out there, especially after all the business of being in the office, being with people and solving all the problems,” she offered.

Jerry will tell you that the profit from ranching really isn’t in the cattle.  “The profit in ranching is in the real estate.  You purchase the land, and then you farm and ranch it, and you hold onto it for several years.  Usually the land goes up in value,” Jerry said.  “In the past we have sold some ranches and each time we’ve sold them for a profit.”

Land and business are a large part of Jerry’s life, and he certainly is not embarrassed by the profits generated from his enterprises.  But believe it or not, there is something of far greater importance to Jerry Caven than profit.

Roads To Success 5.2

Royal Fork In The Road

With the success of his McDonald’s franchises Jerry Caven set out to expand his restaurant business with the new Royal Fork Buffet concept.  His hard work had paid off with McDonald’s and he saw no reason it wouldn’t work for the new restaurant.  As it turned out, the Royal Fork Buffet concept was so successful that Jerry eventually had forty-eight restaurants operating in twelve states.

“Essentially, with Jerry, it was something that he would like,” Merlyn Knight explained, referring to the restaurant experience.  “When we go into a restaurant, what do we want in terms of cleanliness, service, quality and value?”

In 1978, after eleven successful years of operation, Jerry sold his Royal Fork Buffet restaurants.  By the early eighties, he was ready to get back into the restaurant business again.

“We started to build some more Royal Buffet restaurants and so we opened up eleven restaurants the second time around,” Jerry commented.

The second time around turned out to be just as successful as the first.  By 2002, after thirty-five years in business, Jerry began gradually selling the second chain of restaurants – this time to make way for a brand new restaurant concept.

The new restaurant chain, Mongo’s Grill, continues Jerry’s tried and true approach to the restaurant business.  It offers the same cleanliness, service, quality and value as the Royal Fork eateries.  Mongo’s goes a step further offering a healthy choice of ingredients in a create your own stir-fry theme.  The menu of fresh meats, poultry, seafood and vegetables is proving very popular.  Jerry currently has five Mongo’s, three in Canada, one in Minnesota and one in Idaho.

But for what reason did Jerry sell his original chain of restaurants? Jerry supplied the answer, “We have always taken our excess cash flow and put it into real estate ever since we started business.”

Jerry actually started acquiring small properties back in his McDonald’s days and over the years his real estate holdings had grown substantially.  Other businesses evolved out of the real estate holdings and Jerry ultimately concluded that the restaurant business as an expansion tool no longer fit into his business plan.  He decided to center the majority of his efforts on real estate.

“The restaurants were doing very well.  The restaurants had no debt so we saw that as a good way to raise funds for the real estate part of our business,” Jerry elaborated.

As Jerry acquired more and more property he developed a love for a particular variety of land.  It was a love that would grow into something of a lifestyle, a break from the daily grind of corporate office work, and it would be profitable as well.

Roads To Success 4.2

15 Cent Burgers

In the mid-1960s McDonald’s restaurants were not the McDonald’s we know today.  Merlyn Knight is President of Jerry Caven’s Royal Fork Restaurant Corporation.  He explained what it was like in the beginning.  “It was the old McDonalds with no indoor seating.  Just the open front and fifteen-cent burgers in those days.”

Merlyn Knight may be President of the Royal Fork Restaurant Corporation today, but he started out at Jerry’s first McDonald’s restaurant.  “Jerry hired me himself and trained me the first night,” Merlyn recalled.  “I worked alongside him for the whole time I was there.”

“We just got in and just worked, and just went with it,” Jerry added.  “We were actually running scared, I guess, of the consequences of not being successful.”

“We worked very hard but we had a good time in doing it,” Merlyn Knight continued.  “That’s what allowed us to become very, very productive and a very, very successful McDonald’s unit.”

The success at first was small, but success nonetheless.  “At the end of the first month we did a P & L for the first time in my life; I had no business training,” Jerry related.  “And we had made $700.”

That small profit would prove to be only the beginning.  McDonald’s headquarters took note as Jerry’s monthly profits steadily grew.  He had been in business six months when they approached him again.  McDonald’s had another restaurant in Portland, Oregon that was not doing well.  They asked Jerry to purchase it and turn it around, just as he had turned around the failing Boise franchise.

“I told McDonald’s we still don’t have any money.  They said, okay we will give you that one,” Jerry told our camera.

Jerry accepted, and eventually, McDonald’s gave him two more restaurant franchises that were not performing well, both in Washington State.  “Within about fourteen to eighteen months after taking over the Boise McDonald’s we had a total of four McDonald’s in three different states,” Jerry offered.  “Finally, about a year after that we got an honest to goodness franchise that we did pay for in Reno, Nevada.”

Jerry wanted to further expand his McDonald’s business, but McDonald’s would not sell him any more franchises.  The corporate headquarters advised him to operate the units he had with a promise of more franchises later.  Rather than wait for McDonalds, Jerry and his staff began searching for a new restaurant concept that they could start themselves.

“People are looking for value,” Jerry pointed out.  “They want good food, good service, in a pleasant atmosphere, and all that for a good price.  We decided on a buffet concept, so in 1967 we opened up the first Royal Fork Buffet in Pocatello, Idaho.”

It sounds rather cut-and-dried the way Jerry described it, but Merlyn Knight explained why the new venture wasn’t just another day at the office.  “It’s very, very risky because you don’t know how people are going to respond.  And buffets at that time mostly had been called smorgasbords.  They were an all-you-can-eat, kind of throw the food out there, and it was not high quality.  So the idea of having a buffet was to have higher quality, a higher image and really appeal to the family.”

So, Jerry Caven’s new restaurant concept was off and running in Pocatello.  Now the only question remaining was would it be as successful as his McDonald’s franchises?