Part One: The Early Days
This is Not the Restaurant Business I Grew Up In
By Paul G Fetscher CCIM CRX CLS, President Great American Brokerage
Like many other American teenagers, my first paycheck job was at a hamburger stand. That was just two years after Ray Kroc had purchased the development rights from Mac & Dick McDonald. Burgers were 15 cents, a shake 20 cents and just 12 cents for great fries. All in all, a great lunch for 47 cents. All transactions were cash. I used to get tips when I worked at the window. I cut my teeth working for Carroll’s Hamburgers. It was a 1,168 square-foot building with a basement. That’s where I had to go to get the 50-pound bags of potatoes. I carried them upstairs, peeled them, cut out the eyes, sliced them into a sink filled with water. Then I got up to my elbows stirring them up to rinse off excess starch. Cooking them was a two- step process. First, they were par cooked for about three minutes. Those par cooked potatoes needed about another two minutes to finish them off to a golden brown. Our competition wasn’t McDonalds since there weren’t any in New York. Instead, it was Wetsons, Burger Chef and the newly opened All American Burger.
I went to college and majored in civil engineering. I got to work on everything from solidifying the soil under Subways in Brooklyn, up to working on building the first nuclear power plant in the Carolinas. But I wasn’t having fun!
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