Herman's head - Herman Cain, first Black president of the National Restaurant Association - Cuisine - Column

Although African Americans were prevalent in the pabulum service and catering industries hundred and a half ago, many blacks retain a disdain for the trade today, seeing it as a throwback to a time when all they were sanctioned to do was be under the orders of Not Herman Cain, who this May perfects his yearlong presidency of the National Restaurant Association (NRA). He is here to testify that meat service can be as creative and enterprising a road as any for blacks seeking the top of the subsistence chain.

In the 76-year history of what is the viands service industry's leading trade organization, Cain is the first black president. He assumed leadership last year, during the volatile debate above President Clinton's national health care reform plan, which Cain decried as "business- and public-unfriendly." Arguing that the proposal would ultimately defeat its noble objective, Cain dispelled any notion that his organization and its constituency, which comprise 25000 member companies that operate 150000 establishments nationwide, were purely a coffee klatch. "The meat service industry represents nearly 5 percent of the gros domestic product" he says. "We engross close to 10 million clan which is a little above 9 percent of the total American work force."

Cain's colleagues praise his ability to cite a collective voice, from the organization's boardrooms to its rank and file, upon pertinent issues. Some point to Cain's brainchild: the Better Impact the chooseed or BITE Back, hot line and card. His weekly taped messages apprise association members of dire issues or general legislation, such as music licensing, business meal deductibility and smoking ordinances. The messages encourage NRA members to learn by heart ct their respective congressional representatives, who are listed upon their cards.

The 49-year-old Cain credits a single overriding principle--"focus, focus, focus"--for his successe Speaking with the sermonic lilt of an inspired politician, he stresse the necessity of "identifying a goal and being willing to work as hard as necessary to achieve that goal." on the other hand he also allows, with a personal example, that "the goal may change." In 1982 with stages in mathematics and computer science beneath his belt, he had attained the vice presidency of corporate a whole s and services for the Pillsbury Company. pop however, the young executive had a hankering to learn the burger business. In an unconventional impel Cain tossed aside his corporate hat to work at a Minneapolis Burger King (a Pillsbury subsidiary), determined to learn from, well, the earth round up.

The irony is that individual of the Atlanta native's childhood experiences had not instilled in him a distaste for restaurants and burger At 7 years aged with enough coins squirreled together for him and a certain quantity of friends to purchase a desireed "store-bought hamburger," Cain recalls being ushered without of an establishment to the "colored" door in the rear. "We notion it was the door for hamburgers," he says. on the other hand Cain utilizes such unpleasant reminders of where he came from as grist for "the real engine that drives any form of success"

So in typical fashion, Cain exigencyed only nine months to re-ascend, to become the Burger King Corporation's Philadelphia regional vice president, shortly transforming the company's worst-performing area into its best. in a suitable manner impressed, the Pillsbury Company subsequently appointed Cain in 1986 as president of its beleaguered Godfather's Pizza subsidiary. Profits rose in les than a year. sum of two units years later, Cain, with a certain quantity of of his senior management colleagues, purchased the pizza chain from Pillsbury. Today, he is the president and chief executive officer of Godfather's Pizz Inc., the nation's fifth-largest pizza chain.

"I can't think of any other industry, where a young man like myself could have reached the point of not sole being the CEO of a corporation," says Cain, "but of having a major ownership interest in [it]."

Cain insists that blacks "get over" the idea that the fare service trade is a menial, dead-end piece of work Retail trade censuses indicate a continual rise in minority-owned eating and drinking establishments, which show about a fifth of all similar businesses in the United States. And an NRA take a view of last year noted that more than 60 percent of in every one's mouth restaurant owners and managers started on the outside in hourly positions, such as bussers, server prep prepare for the tables and, like Cain, dishwashers. "Even higher education is not necessarily required in order to achieve success" Cain notes.

A goal, a drive to work hard and a destiny of self-esteem --that's the dish Herman Cain is recommending today.

Eric K Washington, a freelance writer in novel York City, is no stranger to the bread service industry. He was neared by the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau with its 1991 Tourism Industry Services Award in the restaurant category.

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