WORTH SUPPORTING
Pillsbury entrepreneurs tell of failure and success
Eli Zabar of New York City's Zabar's delicatessen and founder of the larger Zabar enterprise (E.A.T., Eli's Bread, TASTE), speaks to hotel students in October. See larger image
Milkshake mogul Jim Farrell, CALS '78, is a tall, slender man with boyish good looks and a presentation style that is unpretentious and even intimate.
Using PowerPoint slides, he told his story to a dozen students in Statler Hall this September, detailing a longish list of his professional failures: starting a greenhouse insulation business that was brought down by falling oil prices in the '80s, being let go from McKinsey Consulting, unsuccessfully trying to launch a waste management company after graduating from Harvard Business School, and then being asked to resign from two subsequent corporate management jobs. His wife, Catherine, sat in the audience smiling serenely.
Zabar's delicatessen logo. See larger image
"It was harder on my wife," Farrell said at one point, "than it was on me." It was difficult for Catherine, he explained, to face eight years of sympathetic looks and subtle questioning from friends about her husband's progress on the launch of his mysterious milkshake company. For several years, Farrell admitted, the family was forced to live off his wife's income while he poured his efforts into trying to make his dream a reality.
Farrell was one of six guests invited to speak on campus this semester as part of the Conversations with Entrepreneurs Series sponsored by the Leland C. and Mary M. Pillsbury Institute for Hospitality Entrepreneurship at the School of Hotel Administration.
Hotel School alumni Jeff and Mark Broadhurst of the Eat'n Park Hospitality Group and Parkhurst Dining Services meet students after their presentation in October. See larger image
While the famous Dean's Distinguished Lecture Series, founded by Dean H.B. Meek in 1963, exposes Hotel school students to some of the most powerful hospitality business leaders in the world, it is the Pillsbury Institute that allows students to hear the life stories of successful entrepreneurs up close and personal and then to dine with them in a private dining room in Banfi's.
Tom Ward, the institute's managing director, works with students to identify and invite a dozen or more hospitality-industry entrepreneurs to campus each year.
"Every business relies on the efforts of individuals, but none more so than the entrepreneurial enterprise," he says. "Close, first-hand involvement with successful entrepreneurs – people who create something from nothing through vision and drive – is what the Pillsbury conversation series is all about."
Eat'n Park Hospitality Group logo. See larger image
"Things I wish someone had told me about entrepreneurship when I was at Cornell," Farrell said cheerfully, reading from a projected slide. The bits of wisdom that followed included the admonition to always look calm, even if you aren't; to foster a "relentless desire to move forward"; and to both metaphorically and literally "drive to the front door."
"If I write a book, this will be the title," Farrell said. Driving to the front door, according to Farrell, means aiming exactly where you want to you go, not to a parking space three blocks away. "Your life will go where you aim it, so aim it toward where you most want to be."
Jim Farrell, CALS '78, founder of F'real, chats with students after his talk in September as part of the Conversations with Entrepreneurs Series. See larger image
Today, Farrell's private company, F'real, employs 60 people and sells nearly a million creamy milkshakes every week, freshly made to order on F'real's patented in-store blenders at thousands of convenience store locations across the country. After years of struggle to get it up and running, Farrell's milkshake company is worth tens of millions of dollars, and he did it without venture capital and without partners.
A few weeks after Farrell's visit, the same room in Statler Hall was crowded with students to hear Eli Zabar recount how he came to own restaurants, wine bars, markets, a busy catering business, bakeries and a farmers' market; how he turned bread from a commodity to an artisanal luxury item; and how – in short – he (with his older brothers) became synonymous in New York City with gourmet food.
F'real logo. See larger image
"I managed to get fired from every job I ever had," Zabar told the students proudly. After failing at real estate development as a young man, he traveled Europe for three months, where in London he came across a store making and selling high-quality prepared foods. "I thought, 'I'm going to do that!'" Zabar said. "I couldn't cook, bake or run a business, but that's what I wanted to do."
The Pillsbury Institute has helped add entrepreneurial courses to the school's curriculum, and runs a residence program that brings entrepreneurs – like Brad Tolkin '80, chief executive officer of World Travel Holdings, and Kenneth M. Blatt '81, principal of Caribbean Property Group LLC – to campus to teach classes and advise students in launching companies.
The Pillsbury Institute was created in 2006 with a $15 million commitment from the Pillsburys. Among its many programs, the institute launched the first annual Cornell Hospitality Business Plan Competition this fall thanks to generous support from Stanley Sun '00 and his parents, Dennis and Betty Sun. The winning team will receive a cash prize of $15,000, which will be awarded during Hotel Ezra Cornell with Lee Pillsbury among the judges.
"I'm excited about it," Pillsbury admits. "I think we're going to see a lot of good creative thinking, and I'm hoping we're going to see the new new thing."