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.

© 2012 Philip Kassel