CIT: Behind the Business "Jon Luther"

When I was fifteen or sixteen years old, a friend of mine’s father bought a Henry’s Hamburgers franchise, which was sort of the front-runner, ahead of McDonald’s, with fifteen cent hamburgers. I worked there, and I enjoyed it. But I realized very early that I was a front of the house kind of guy. I enrolled in a liberal arts program at Canisius College, but decided after a couple years that it didn’t seem to fit. I looked back at that restaurant experience and said, "Let’s try that." So I went to Paul Smith’s College, to gain a degree in restaurant management.

On my first day as a manager of Canisius College’s food service, I met a wonderful line cook named Sarah Henley. I suppose I had a "deer in the headlights" look, because she looked at me and said, "You don’t know what’s going on, do you?" And I said, "Absolutely not," to which she replied, "Come on, I’ll show you the way." A lot of folks talk about mentors over their careers, but my mentors go back to those who actually bailed me out. If it wasn’t for Sarah reaching out to me and helping me, I don’t know if I would have made it to the next step.

I applied for and got a position as a vending salesperson for Aramark. The job was to sell vending services to manufacturing plants. That expanded into college food service sales, then hospital food service sales. I did that for about five years, then moved on with them to run a vending division in Connecticut. After that, I went to Aramark corporate as head of marketing for their business and industry group—and from there to run their luxury restaurant division. So here’s a fifteen-year span, where I started selling vending services, and ended up running this huge luxury restaurant division.

One of things that has always helped me in my career, and something I’ll always encourage any reader to embrace, is continuous learning. Throughout my career, the minute I thought I knew everything, I’d learn something new. All of your mentors along the way give you little nuggets of assistance and coaching that you’re able to apply to your leadership style. And it’s an amalgam of those mentors and learning experiences that frame who you are as a leader—and help you create your own leadership style

When I joined Dunkin' Brands, we were part of an offshore public company. But we were a very small, non-core asset of a very, very large spirits and wine company, Allied Domecq. And every day, they would sweep our cash, and send it to London where they would use it to build their spirits and wines business. And I used to say to people that I used to have to fly three thousand miles across the ocean to beg for attention for our Dunkin' Brands’ portfolio.

We were always this wonderful coffee chain, disguised as a donut shop. And when you dug into exactly what was going on with the company, it was really about coffee. Sixty-three percent of our sales nationwide are coffee or coffee-related—even higher in the New England and New York areas. One day during the interview process, before I came on board, there was an eight-column article about coffee in the Wall Street Journal. They mentioned all of our competitors, but Dunkin' Donuts wasn’t mentioned. So I took the article to my interview and promised that you would never see an article about coffee written again without Dunkin’ Donuts mentioned. And so far, that’s been the case.

Our business model is one of a franchisor. The single most important thing that we do is select the right franchise owners. We’re together for a very, very long period of time—typically twenty years with ten-year extension. It’s a wonderful entrepreneurial opportunity for franchisees. Because they invest their own money and they’re on their own—but minimize the risk by partnering with us—nine out of ten franchise stores succeed. On the other hand, only one out of ten of, say "Jon’s Donuts" would succeed, because the infrastructure and the support just aren’t there.

When we put freezers in suburban homes back in the fifties, it changed the retail ice cream business. It meant that you could buy ice cream in supermarkets, bring it home, and have the ice cream party in your backyard. But we are again in the process of transforming the brand and expanding in the U.S. Internationally, though, Baskin-Robbins has achieved enormous success—particularly in Middle Eastern and Asian markets, where people don’t have large living spaces—it’s more of an outside-the-home experience.

I’m on a number of industry boards just because I like to build relationships within the industry. For example, I’m honored to have been appointed to the Culinary Institute’s Board of Trustees. The school has a tremendous reputation – not only in our industry, but around the world. So for Dunkin’ Brands, this is an opportunity to learn and pass on this knowledge to our franchisees and employees, and, in turn, expand the culinary attributes of our industry.

One of our values is to always be sensitive to the communities that we serve—if you have the good fortune to give back, you have to. Years ago, I started getting involved with philanthropic efforts, many of them personal, and many of them business. It’s not one or the other, it’s both for me. An example is my involvement in The Berklee College of Music in Boston. I’ve always been a fan of music, although I can’t sing a note. It’s a generation bridge: My father was an amateur musician and now my son is also a musician. My involvement connects me with both those generations. Music is part of the soul of all of us, and I think it’s important to give kids a chance to have a career in music.