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Shares culture, systems, CEO with Red Robin
It was the restlessness of two brothers from a family of successful bakers that pushed Red Robin Gourmet Burgers & Spirits down the path to franchising.
Michael and Stephen Snyder, as delivery drivers for their family's bustling multistate Snyder's Bakeries, based in Yakima, Wash., viewed plenty of commercial kitchens in their youth. But neither could have foreseen then the career in restaurants they would later forge as a result of their desire to break away and their meeting with Gerald Kingen, owner of a popular Seattle restaurant and bar called Red Robin.
"My dad is only 20 years older than me, and I didn't want to be `Son of Jim' all my life, so I decided to do my own thing," Michael Snyder recalls of his feelings in 1979, when he was 29. "That's when I approached Kingen and with a smile and a handshake said, 'I have a few bucks and less brains; let's see if we can do something with this concept.' "
Some 19 years later Snyder is in a unique position to embrace that challenge once again as chief executive for franchisor Red Robin International and franchisee The Snyder Group Co., based in Englewood, Colo. This time, however, a lot more people are interested in the outcome.
Sold by Kingen to Tokyo-based Skylark Co. Ltd. in 1985, Red Robin International today employs about 3,600 people to operate 46 restaurants and franchise 92 to others. Red Robin systemwide sales were about $316 million in 1997, says Snyder, who has been chief executive and a major shareholder for nearly two years.
The Snyder Group, which opened its first Red Robin in Yakima, employs about 1,200 people and reported 1997 sales of $40 million from 13 restaurants in eastern Washington and Colorado. Snyder says the company's units generate average annual sales of about $3 million from guest checks of $8.75 and realize average net income before occupancy costs of 31 percent.
A single building in Englewood, a suburb of Denver, serves as headquarters for both Red Robin and The Snyder Group. There and throughout both systems, "unbridled" tale telling is becoming an integral part of increasingly similar corporate cultures.
To employees of both companies the term...