Banking on KC – Case Dorman of Jack Stack Barbecue
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Kelly Scanlon:
Welcome to Banking on KC. I'm your host, Kelly Scanlon. Thank you for joining us. With us on this episode is Case Dorman, the owner of Jack Stack Barbecue. Welcome Case.
Case Dorman:
Thanks, Kelly.
Kelly Scanlon:
Not many people can say they bought the company they worked for when they were 16 years old, and yet that's exactly what you did. And the funny part about it to me anyway, is that you almost didn't survive your first day on the job. So tell us about that first day of the company you would someday own and the lesson you learned from that.
Case Dorman:
Yeah, so very true. I like to tell this story to our team as an example of the passion that we have for our business and our commitment to excellence and what we strive for every day. So back in 1979, I was 16 years old. I played tennis at Grandview High School and I was coming home from a tennis match and my folks decided we'd stop at the Smokestack in Martin City and grab a sandwich. And so they had a help wanted sign on the door, and so I asked for an application when I came in and I filled it out while we were eating and asked for a manager and the manager came by and he said, "Hey, great to meet you Case. Can you start tomorrow?"
Kelly Scanlon:
Oh wow.
Case Dorman:
And I said, "Sure, I can start tomorrow." The following day was Mother's Day, which at that point was the busiest day in the year for most restaurants, certainly for our restaurant it was the busiest day of the year, and so I was supposed to be there at 11. I got there about 20 minutes early and they were kind of instructing me on where to go and what to do, and they said, "Okay, well you're going to be in charge of beans today and your only job is when they call for beans to make sure that you have enough beans in the counter and that they're hot." And I thought, piece of cake, no sweat.
And so 11 o'clock rolls around and they said, start putting some beans up. And so I start doing my thing and just three or four minutes later this really large man came around the corner and he had a big dark afro and he stuck his finger right in the middle of one of my beans and he looked at me and he said, "Let me tell you something you little so-and-so," and it wasn't very nice what he said to me. And he said, "If you put one more cold bean in my counter, you're fired." And I thought a couple things in that instant. One, I thought the next bean of mine that he puts his finger in, I'm going to take some skin off of his finger.
Kelly Scanlon:
He motivated you, that's for sure.
Case Dorman:
He did.
Kelly Scanlon:
This was Jack, I assume.
Case Dorman:
This was Jack, yes, my father-in-law. And my next thought was, wow, he is really serious about us getting this right and not just right, but excellent. I could see the passion he had for his business very quickly. I could see the passion he had for us performing at a very high level, very early on, and I was drawn to that. As much as it set me back initially, having that exchange with him, it really motivated me to want to perform well when I was there.
Kelly Scanlon:
I have to ask you, why were your beans cold?
Case Dorman:
Well, they weren't very specific in my initial training on how hot hot should be, so-
Kelly Scanlon:
I see, okay. It wasn't like you just forgot to turn the burner on.
Case Dorman:
And they were not cold. They just didn't burn his finger.
Kelly Scanlon:
I see, okay.
Case Dorman:
And I would like to point out, Kelly, that we no longer stick our fingers in the beans.
Kelly Scanlon:
Good job.
Case Dorman:
That was a 1970s practice that you can imagine seeing a lot of old cooking shows where the chef sticks their finger in the item that they're making and samples it and-
Kelly Scanlon:
Right, eats off the spoon that they're stirring with, yeah.
Case Dorman:
Very much a product of the seventies and not done for many, many years.
Kelly Scanlon:
I worked in restaurants in the seventies. I know what went on in restaurants in the seventies so I get it. So what was it that made you realize that you were going to stick with this company? Was that kind of a gradual realization? Did you leave and come back? Tell us about that.
Case Dorman:
Yeah, so really the most important thing that happened to me on that first day was I saw this really beautiful young lady for the first time in my life. I can still get a little choked up talking about this. My kids all know this story. We have it documented as a family that I saw my wife for the first time that day and I just knew immediately I was attracted to her and drawn to her. She has such a way about her, she's a beautiful lady, but she has a beautiful smile and I looked at the guy next to me and I said, I'm going to take that girl out," and he said, "You will die. That is the owner's daughter. You just saw him. He carries a gun in his shoe and he will shoot you."
Kelly Scanlon:
This sounds like a plot out of a movie.
Case Dorman:
It was very, very surreal for me. But long story short, several months later, six months later or so, it turned out that she thought I was kind of cute too. But while I was washing dishes, I had dropped my school schedule and she stepped on it so she could find out what my name was because she didn't want to ask somebody what my name was because that would be a tell. So she actually kept my school schedule and I had to figure out my first day of school by myself that next Monday. But she started talking to me and we started talking and lo and behold, we started going out and once we went out, it was clear to me that I should not continue to work there. My father-in-law and I had a very contentious early period. My father-in-law and I both have very strong personalities. We both think we know what we want and are very passionate when we decide to go after something and so we clashed pretty hard for a number of years.
Kelly Scanlon:
But you came back.
Case Dorman:
I did. I left, I stayed in the restaurant industry. I went to technical school, back then it was a certificate in computer technology, so I thought I was going to be a computer nerd after I graduated from school.
Kelly Scanlon:
You're kind of ahead of the curve there.
Case Dorman:
Yeah, back with mainframes and pre-PC. Anyway, I started doing that. Jennifer and I continued to date. In 1986 we got engaged to be married and we bought our first home and I was working as a electronic technician for electronic business equipment here in town, and she was managing the restaurant and that was our married plan. I was going to continue to pursue a career in electronics and computers and she was going to manage the restaurant and that was our plan. I came back and started working nights after we bought our first house, just earn a little extra cash so that we could afford our home. I found myself after several months just kind of running from my day job to get to the restaurant at night because I was just so energized by it and was finding my passion for the business.
At about six months after that, our general manager at the time left pretty abruptly, and my father-in-law, Jack came to me and he said, "I could really use your help. What do you think about partnering with me?" And I said, "I don't know. I got to think about it." I said, "We're not very good on our first attempt." And he said, "Yeah." He said, "I know that." He said, "But things are different now and if it doesn't work, we'll know and you can go back to what you were doing and we'll continue what we're doing." So I did. I thought about it that night and what really struck me was my years working in the industry. So all the time I was going through school, I was working in restaurants and had a variety of experiences. I witnessed a lot of really poor leadership in the restaurant industry and I was blessed enough to work with a great leader, a guy named Joe Mercer who used to run Harry Starkers on the plaza.
Joe really inspired me because he had created at that restaurant a very professional atmosphere. I felt like everybody I worked with within that restaurant was not just there as a job to pass through to something else in life, but they were true restaurant professionals that worked there and he had developed a great team that had admiration and respect for one another. Everybody did their work and did it well and performed at a high level. And at that time, I've told many people, I think we were the best restaurant in Kansas City.
Kelly Scanlon:
It was a great restaurant. I remember it. I had many lunches in particular there. And here you are now nearly 45 years later from the first day that you started and you've been there to witness the growth and really see how the sausage is made, and you've learned from many different restaurant professionals. So what's been the secret sauce that's carried the Jack Stack brand all these years, especially in light of all the other competition for barbecue that we have here in Kansas City?
Case Dorman:
I really think what separates us from all the competition in restaurant in Kansas City is our people and our commitment to our people and our passion for creating an environment where people can thrive. In my early years working in restaurants, I got to see a lot of bad examples of how not to do that. And I got to see one really good example of how to do that. And so when I was given the opportunity, one of my goals for us as a company was to create a different way of leading restaurants in a way that honored and respected every individual who worked in our company and just a commitment to them first. So in most restaurants in those days, all you heard about was customers always right. And it is the guest, it's our guest today that are our lifeblood, but it's our people that are going to be in front of that guest and it's our people that are going to going to share our values and help our guests to see and feel the culture that we have as a company.
And I just knew that if we didn't commit to our team first, all of those people that had poured their hearts into our business first, we could never expect them to do that for our guests. And so to me it was pretty simple math. But today, people talk about the pandemic, they talk about everything that's happened through the last number of years and it has been a challenge for everybody in our industry, and I don't want to sell that short. I have always told our team, if you are a professional in the restaurant industry and you live in Kansas City, you should want to work for our company because we're going to pay you better. We're going to treat you better. We're going to provide more opportunity. We're just going to create a better opportunity for the individual than our competitors will. So even in our darkest days through COVID.
Kelly Scanlon:
Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. How did you get through that when you couldn't open and so forth? How did you take care of folks then?
Case Dorman:
The same way we've always done it, Kelly, we stuck by our team and we put them first and we committed to them that we were going to work through this together and come out the other side together. And so it was hundreds of very committed individuals on our team running as hard as they could to make sure that we could save what it was that we had.
Kelly Scanlon:
Yeah. I know another issue that restaurants, really all businesses for that matter, have experienced during COVID is supply chain issues. And the restaurant industry has been no different. Meat packing plants shut down and all kinds of different things have occurred, as we all know. So you put in place some pretty innovative measures that allowed you to continue to have access and also kept things affordable. So tell us about that strategy.
Case Dorman:
Yeah, so it was a lot of good news, bad news going on at that time, and I've always held this philosophy that when things are their toughest, I think is where culture really shines. And if you have a strong culture, you'll rise above adversity. You'll rise above the challenges that present themselves. And our team, I take no credit for this, our team got very, very creative. Good news, bad news in 2019, in the fall of 2019, we had invested in our new event facility at 130 7th and Antioch. It's called Fiorellas Event Center. We had made a substantial investment in that facility, 40,000 square feet and all of a sudden, four months later, COVID strikes us and we've got all of this space, and clearly we can't do public events.
Nobody's going to have a public event with the new COVID restrictions. So we had a large facility that we had access to and we could use as a warehouse. So we just went out and as expediently as we could, we just started buying the products that we knew were going to be crucial for us to be able to make it through the tough months that we had ahead. And we filled our event space with those things that we needed and came up with a warehousing situation for ourselves. And then we did have great vendor partners too. Our vendor partners really prioritized us, and we talk about this a lot too. We talk about our vendor relationships that we have and the importance of our vendor relationships.
And it just proved out for us that when you do what you say you're going to do year after year and you build really strong partnerships, then those are the relationships that count the most. When things get tough and our vendors rallied around us, we rallied around them and it worked for us, but we did, we had the disadvantage of having a very substantial investment that wasn't generating any revenue, but we had the advantage to be able to use the facility for other purposes during that time and it really worked out well for us.
Kelly Scanlon:
Right, that resiliency. So many stories like that during COVID. So often businesses will just take off, they'll grow really fast, and they think that they are successful, but the growth actually kills them because it's not managed well, it's not sustainable in the long term. How has Jack Stack over several generations of family, which is a whole nother issue with a lot of businesses, how has it been able to grow within the family framework as well as just the decisions that you need to make when you're deciding you're going to open a new location or open any event center and so forth? How have you been able to manage that kind of growth?
Case Dorman:
So I think the most important thing that we really work hard to hold ourselves to is this value that we have that's very important and listed in our core values of excellence. And so anytime we think about expansion, the first question that we ask ourselves is, can we do it with excellence? Can we maintain and sustain the levels of quality that we have in our business today and continue to work to improve that with this addition to our business? So when we ask ourselves that question, first, we're more cautious with the growth opportunities that we take. It's interesting because I have this conversation with my sons a lot around business planning and clarity and those kind of things and I've never been a, we have to do this by this time and by this time and by this time guy.
I've always felt like I would show up every day, do my best work, and if opportunities presented themselves, great opportunities presented themselves, then it would be very clear to us what the great opportunities were, and we should take advantage of those when they came. There's never been this drive to grow for the sake of growth. It's always been growth to create opportunity, growth to extend excellence, growth to continue a trajectory that we're on. We are very much a pro-growth company, but we like to do that in a way that allows us to live into that value of excellence that we have.
Kelly Scanlon:
You mentioned the family transitions, and there have been several throughout the years, but when you bought Jack Stack from your father-in-law, Jack Fiorella in 2009, what did you do to ensure a successful transition? You've already said that you're both very, very passionate people.
Case Dorman:
Passionate and we're both very driven and we know what we want or we think we know what we want.
Kelly Scanlon:
Sometimes when that happens, there's a clash of personalities as there was early on with you. But for example, as he had to exit the business, where did he put that passion so that it was yours now. Sometimes with people that kind of a personality, it's hard to leave, and you obviously you knew what you wanted and the direction that you wanted to take it. So how did you manage that transition?
Case Dorman:
Yeah, so family business is challenging and I would say at a lot of levels and emotional levels, it's much more challenging than a business that doesn't revolve around family. My father-in-law and I were incredible partners for 25 years. He had a level of brilliance that was uniquely his, and I was able to learn from him for all of those years. And he taught me so much, but I had different talents than he had. And my talents with his talents were a very powerful combination. And we both realized it, and we both were able to leverage that and we just had this incredible rapport with one another where I respected what he was great at and he respected what I was great at, and it worked. And so there was a process. He had great foresight. In the early nineties he made a plan for us to buy the business from him, and it was a progression.
And so through the early two thousands, the progression was really Jack was becoming less as I was becoming more. So he was allowing me to lead. I'd moved into the presidency of the company in the early two thousands, so I've been in that role for a number of years. But Jack is an extremely charismatic figure. When he walks into a room he kind of takes over the room. So he has a really powerful personality. That's not me. I'm very introverted. I'm quiet. I move to the corner instead of to the center of the room. So I was really aware that I couldn't do it the way he did it, and I had to do it the way it worked for me. And he was so respectful of that.
We both admired each other's strengths. So he admired my strengths and supported those strengths. And so when we did the transition, I really treated it as a new start for our business. And I did a bit of research myself on life cycles of family businesses, why family businesses survive, why family businesses fail and we shared that with our team. We had a company-wide meeting across every business unit that we had at the time. At the time we had six different business units. We had meetings with each one of those business units. We talked about the life cycle of family business. We talked about the life cycle of business in general and how when businesses meet maturity, eventually there's a decline.
So you have to really renew growth, you have to start growth again. And so approach to the team was, we're going to do that now. We're going to start all over again, like we haven't been here for the last 40 years. We're going to start all over again, and we're going to create what our core values are today. We're going to create a new mission for ourselves. We're going to create a new purpose for ourselves, and we are going to start again so that we don't decline from here forward. We're going to ascent from here forward, and we are going to be new growth.
Kelly Scanlon:
As you say that it strikes me that had to be really challenging because Jack Stack had become a iconic brand in Kansas City by that time and so you have raving fans. And when that happens, a lot of times those customers, those people, guests do not want to see change if they have an ownership of buy-in. So you had to find that balance, I would assume, where you're starting over, but at the same time, you don't want to disappoint your guests with too many changes or [inaudible 00:17:28] they felt like it wasn't their brand anymore.
Case Dorman:
Yeah, so one of the things I told my father-in-law when the day we completed the transition, and I said, you will never be ashamed of the company that we will become. And so that was where my heart was. That was where the heart of our team was to honor our past and understand our past and understand all of the things in our past that made us who we were at that point in time and to build on that, not to destroy that or change that or move away from that, but to honor that and build from that, let that be the foundation.
Kelly Scanlon:
And now you have the next generation working for you. You mentioned your sons. What do you hope to impart to them? And do you think that they'll eventually take over the business or is it premature to even think about that?
Case Dorman:
Definitely not premature to think about that. We have been planning for many years for the transition of our family business. I just have to say my wife Jennifer is the rock of our family, and she has been the most amazing business partner. And our kids are a reflection of really her and her heart and her commitment to our family. And so yes, we are working on transitioning to the next generation. That wasn't always our plan. I think for Jennifer and I both, we were always focused on just the brand and making sure the brand was cared for and honored, and we were creating real enterprise value in the business that we were building. So it was really more than about family. It was about systems and processes and leadership and building something sustainable for the future, not something that relied on me or relied on my wife or relied on a member of our family, but something that was stronger and bigger than any of those things.
And I really feel like that's what we have today. We have something that's bigger than our family, and it's amazing. It's beautiful. And my kids get that. They understand that. They understand that they have a role to play, but that the business can go on with them or without them. But we have chosen because we feel like socially, from a societal standpoint, that we can impact our community more by being in business together as a family business than we can by not being in business together as a family business. So everybody's got their own impressions of our culture today and what's going on in our country. And I think for us, what we want people to see is we want people to see a business that cares about people and understands its role in the community that it serves. So we know that most of the giving that happens within any community comes from privately held or family businesses or families that support that community.
And we try to do our part there. We have a giving mission as a family. We have a service mission as a family. We're here to serve. That's what we're passionate about. So we want to serve our community. We want to serve our team, and we just feel like perpetuating this business in the family. We can do more of that than we could if we sold to an outside investor and had some money to invest or some money to give away. We just feel like this is a longer term play for us, and we're really blessed that we have children that believe this too.
Kelly Scanlon:
Share the values. Absolutely. Well, they've obviously rubbed off. They've heard it enough and lived it enough through their mother and through you. What are some of your favorite memories of Jacks Stack? Obviously your wife.
Case Dorman:
Oh, shoot. Yeah, that first meeting with my wife was a great memory. We've had so many through the years, so many stories, so many hardships. People talk about, it's easy to talk about the success. We've had so many failures, and some of my greatest memories are glimpses into the other side of a failure. So we wanted to expand our business. And at the time, the family wasn't all on the same page about expanding the business, I'll say that. So there were family members that were passionately against growing the business, and I was one that was passionately for growing the business. And I took on a lot of pressure and responsibility to do that. Months into our second restaurant opening, the 95th & Metcalf store, I was just completely overwhelmed and feeling failure. I was just failing at growing this business. And a young lady that worked for us, Juliet Barber came to me, sat with me that day, and she said, "I see it.
I get what you're trying to do and I'm going to help." But that for me, when you talk about great moments, that was just one of those light bulb moments for me that said, okay, we're going to keep going. We're going to keep doing what we're doing because somebody sees it, and if she sees it, maybe somebody else sees it. And so what that led to, Overland Park was a really tough stretch for our family. We had used all the financial resources we'd had. We'd used all the physical resources we'd had. We were just, we were stretched and from the outside we would have people walk in and we'd be busy and they'd say, "Oh my gosh, this thing's a gold mine." And I'd be thinking, yeah, maybe a copper mine, but it's no gold mine, let me tell you.
Kelly Scanlon:
Yeah, you don't see the paddling under the surface.
Case Dorman:
You know how much it costs to do this? It's a lot. But two years later, Kelly, that store was one of the busiest restaurants in our city and has remained one of the busiest restaurants in our city for the last 26 years. And that store just continues to perform really well and has been a great blessing to us. So those were great. We've got to do some really fun stuff. We've gotten to go to New York three times and cook at the James Beard House. We've gotten to go to Miami and do the South Beach Food and Wine Festival with Bobby Flay. We've gotten to go to Los Angeles and do Fox Studios for AMC. We've gotten to travel around the country. We've been honored to, we did the christening for the USS Missouri, the first nuclear class sub with our state's name on it. And so we've just been able to do so many really fun, unique, exciting things that give us an opportunity to represent our city and our community and our business.
Kelly Scanlon:
It's been quite the ride, it sounds like. So where do you go from here? We talked about your sons, the transition to them, but where does the company itself go from here? Where do you... You opened the event space. What other growth opportunities do you see?
Case Dorman:
Yeah, so we're continuing down the same path where we're just keeping our eyes open for the next great opportunity for us. My oldest son, Taylor, who is 33, is in the business with us now. We have a non-family CEO right now, Travis Carpenter, who's been with me almost 30 years. Travis is an amazing man and doing a great job leading our company. And then my son Taylor, runs our restaurant division. So he's over all of our restaurant businesses. My son Keaton runs our non-restaurant businesses. So he runs catering and event business, our wholesale, our retail, and our shipping divisions. So those all fall under his banner.
They both have their own plans for growing the business. And at this point, for me, Kelly, I just want to support their efforts and I see their talent, I see their passion that they have for this work, I see the passion that they have for our people and our community, and I just want to support and help them in any way I can. So in other words, it's not my vision anymore. It's really going to be their vision and they're going to grow this business in the way that they see is best for the company. And I'm super excited to support that and be a part of it, help them in any way I can.
Kelly Scanlon:
That's so beautifully said, Case and just want to thank you for all that you and your business have done for the community and for just the vision that you have had to carry this brand, and it's really a gift to the city.
Case Dorman:
Well, it's been a blessing for us.
Kelly Scanlon:
Thank you for being on the show today. We appreciate it.
Case Dorman:
Thanks, Kelly.
Joe Close:
This is Joe Close, president of Country Club Bank. Thank you to Case Dorman for being our guest on this episode of Banking on KC. The Jack Stack Barbecue brand is iconic, not just in Kansas City, but around the country. It's staying power has endured through multiple decades and several family ownership transitions. A company doesn't achieve that kind of success through chance. So what's been the secret sauce for Jack Stack Barbecue? In a word, values. There's no question they've been serving up value to their customers since day one. But just as important are the values that drive Jack Stack's leaders and associates, a commitment to the pursuit of excellence, a passion for creating an environment that honors, respects and cares about every individual, a dedication to community service and giving, and an intentionality to build a sustainable future. These are the values Country Club Bank shares too, and lives by every day. They are the values that can sustain a company's success for generations, and they are the values that can sustain a community too. Thanks for tuning in this week. We're banking on you Kansas City. Country Club Bank, member FDIC.