Sharing the secret of one businessman’s success

ROBERT GARDNER

I have always felt very fortunate that I became a judge.

For one thing, I enjoyed it. I can’t imagine spending year after

year at a job you hate. That has to be the definition of hell. But

that’s only one reason.

The other is that if I hadn’t become a judge, I probably would

have starved. Knowing the law is only part of being a good attorney.

You have to be a good businessman or, as we have it today, a good

businessperson, to succeed, and a businessman I ain’t. However, I

have an uncanny ability to offer business advice that leads others to

succeed.

Take John McIntosh. Newcomers to the area might not recognize the

name, but those of us who’ve been around awhile know the story of his

career from a small coffee shop in Corona del Mar to the Far West

Enterprise operation with hundreds of restaurants scattered across

the country. The reason for his success is quite simple: He knew me.

John and I have been friends since he started the first Snack Shop

at what is now Ruby’s in Corona del Mar. By the early 1950s, he had

extended this original Snack Shop into a nine-store chain in Orange

County. At that point, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel asked him to come to

Hawaii to discuss the possibility of opening a Snack Shop at the

Royal. He asked me to go along. I assumed he wanted my astute brain

to help him evaluate the project. After looking the situation over, I

gave him my analysis.

“No way. You’ll lose your shirt. Waikiki consists of three

over-age hotels and a few acres of shacks. A drug store handles the

whole coffee shop business now. There aren’t enough tourists because

it’s so tough to get here with a 12- to 14-hour plane ride. Stick to

your Orange County operation, and you’ll never be sorry.”

How was I to know that the jet age was right around the corner,

and that soon fast, cheap jets would be depositing thousands of

tourists a day in Hawaii? John must have had some inkling because he

ignored my excellent advice, put in the Snack Shop and soon had lines

of hungry customers from morning to night. He was off and running and

soon had Snack Shops all over that state.

Shortly after that, John and I flew down to Puerto Vallarta, which

at the time was a sleepy little fishing village with a gringo

population of zero and two ramshackle old hotels. The only way to get

there was by small plane, which landed on the combination cow

pasture/air strip. But it did have a new restaurant on the beach --

low, open, attractive, food broiled in the open.

On our return, he said he was thinking of opening a steak house,

something along the lines of what we’d seen in Puerto Vallarta.

Fortunately, I was there to keep him from making a horrible mistake.

“Don’t do it. You’ve got the world by the tail with your Snack

Shop operation. You’re the best in the field at coffee shops. Stick

to what you know.” And on and on.

Again he ignored my excellent advice and opened Reuben’s, where

Mama Gina is. Soon there were Reuben’s around the country as well as

a number of other restaurants, and a few years later, he sold it all

to the Grace Company for more money than I can even contemplate, and

he owes it all to me. I figure he took me along each time with one

idea: “I’ll hear what Gardner says and then I’ll do exactly the

opposite.”

Not bad advice. I’m available for consultation.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge.

His column runs Tuesdays.