An operator story, from a conversation between MultiUnitOperators and John Lucas of Farmer Boys.
How John got into the industry
John Lucas knew he wanted to be a chef before he knew what a P&L was.
He grew up in a large Italian family in Rhode Island. Food sat at the center of everything. He would stand on a little yellow stool next to his grandmother’s stove and watch her cook. It was his favorite thing in the world.
The lasagna was the one he still chases. He tries to make it every year. His own version, he says, will never quite be the same.
Deciding on a career early
The decision point came in grade school.
A teacher brought in a bag of carrots one day. John peeled them faster than anyone else in the room. Somebody mentioned it. He looked up and said, “yeah, I’m going to be a chef someday.”
He never really stopped working toward that line. Rossi’s, an Italian restaurant back home, hired him through someone connected to the local culinary school. The day he graduated high school, he was already on his way.
The leap from cook to leader
The leap from cook to leader happened at Marriott.
Fresh out of school, John worked under a group of chefs from Japan. What stuck with him was not the technique. It was their discipline. Their commitment. The way they carried themselves as leaders.
They also did something most kitchens did not do at the time. They showed him the path. “They were very helpful in kind of showing me the pathway I could take to be able to grow my career,” he says. He still credits Marriott, and those chefs, for everything that came after.
What John would tell a cook starting out
John’s advice to a young cook sounds almost old-fashioned until you listen to the reasoning.
Finish culinary school. Then do two more years and get a business education. At 21 or 22 it feels irrelevant. By 30 you are running a kitchen, you own the P&L, and the gap shows up fast.
The second piece is harder to engineer and more important. Work for as many different chefs as you can, early. By 30 John had worked for an Italian chef, a German chef, a Japanese chef, and a French chef. He knew his time with each one was short, so he treated it like a crash course. The Japanese chef was a master ice carver, so he learned ice. The French chef specialized in garde manger, so he learned cold station. In Texas, across the street from where this interview was recorded, he learned brisket.
The hardest role to hire for
John is Vice President of Brand and Franchise Development at Farmer Boys, a burger brand operating across California, Arizona and Nevada. The question he gets most from franchisees is about hiring general managers.
His answer is uncomfortable for operators who like clean checklists.
The hard part is not finding somebody who can run numbers. “I often see in the industry folks that are good managers, a good technician, can run great numbers,” he says. The gap is finding a GM who leads hospitality. Who walks the floor and warms the room. Who treats a stranger like a guest.
The trait to hire for: philoxenia
Farmer Boys was founded by five brothers who grew up on a farm in Cyprus. They brought a Greek word with them that John keeps using.
Philoxenia. It translates loosely as “making a friend of a stranger.”
That is the trait John tells franchisees to hunt for when they interview. Not the resume line. Not the POS fluency. The orientation toward people.
How to interview for a people person
Candidates are good at interviews. The word for the trait is easy to parrot. So John looks underneath.
Did they play team sports. Have they been a captain of anything. Did they lead a scout troop, a church group, a club. The specific activity matters less than whether somebody has already chosen, repeatedly, to be responsible for other people.
“More than anything, it shows up in the tone,” he says. “It shows up in how they are as an individual. Do they have that passion for people?”
Then the line that operators should probably tape to the wall:
“If you find that person, even if they don’t check off every single skill block, you can teach them. But you can’t teach them to be natural people leaders and to have those sensibilities. That comes from within.”
How Farmer Boys keeps turnover under 50%
Industry turnover is a running joke. Farmer Boys corporate stores run under 50%, which John concedes is “unheard of.” The franchise side runs comparable.
He is clear about why.
It starts with the GM, every time. The managers who hold their teams are the ones who build a warm, welcoming, positive environment. Then they invest in people on top of that. Constant training. Small, frequent recognition. A visible path to the next level.
The two real reasons people quit
When John digs into exits, two causes show up.
The first is the boss. How the person was treated. That one surprises nobody.
The second is quieter and more fixable. Training was either not there at all, or it was there in name but not delivered in a way that built the person’s confidence. “They know their job and they feel comfortable and confident that they’ll execute their job,” John says. When that is missing, people drift out, even when they liked the brand.
What the industry gets wrong about its own story
Ask John what the industry gets wrong, and he gets evangelical.
“This is an industry that has created a pathway to the middle class more than any other industry in the world,” he says. Franchising especially.
He tells two stories that stuck with him. At a conference in Phoenix a year ago, he struck up a conversation with a quiet man named Paul who was standing alone with a glass of wine. Paul turned out to be the founder of one of the largest breakfast chains in the country. Two weeks later, at a dinner in Glendale, John was shooting the breeze with a man in his early thirties who had come up through the general manager ranks of a well known upscale Chinese chain. The man was now the co CEO. He was also the grandson of the founder.
John’s point is not that these are rare exceptions. His point is that the industry does not tell these stories loudly enough, so young people never hear them.
Where technology fits, and where it does not
The last question was about the future.
John said two things that sit next to each other on purpose.
The first is that technology will reshape the business over the next ten years in ways nobody fully understands yet. AI, robotics, self driving cars. Operators who think the industry is immune are wrong.
The second is that it will not replace the warm hello. “I don’t think the kiosks are going to have anybody ringing the bell,” he says. The operators who maintain the human connection as the technology arrives are the ones who will win. “If you’re able to create that, I think you’re going to win.”
Why every franchisee should join their state restaurant association
John ended with something a lot of operators ignore.
Join your state restaurant association. Here in Texas, the Texas Restaurant Association. In California, the California Restaurant Association.
The reason is practical. When the industry carries its challenges to state lawmakers, the lawmakers do not want to hear from a trade group. They want to hear from an operator. The person who signs the paychecks and knows what a wage change actually does on a Tuesday night. “You’re where the rubber meets the road,” John says. “You’re the one that’s out here creating jobs and opportunities.”
The associations advocate for you whether you know it or not. Showing up gives them teeth.
John Lucas is a longtime chef and multi unit operator. He is Vice President of Brand and Franchise Development at Farmer Boys. Conversation lightly edited for length and readability.