I went to work for Bob's in 1986 at the end of my freshman year at the U of O. In 1987 I left for National Guard training and came back in 1988. In 1992 the company was sold when Bob Corey decided to retire. The buyers were not bad people, but they didn't know the restaurant business. They fired all of the store managers, people who had been there 15-30 years and were truly the heart of the business.
I had learned from those outstanding managers that if you focus on quality, the profit will come. The new owners were an investment group and were profit oriented, not quality oriented. My boss was fired. At that time I was the #3 guy. The assistant manager and I were transferred to the slowest restaurant in the chain. I suspected that this was to justify later firing for performance. We turned it into the highest profit store in the chain in 4 months, even though we created the highest average employee wage in the chain.
I left for two weeks of National Guard training and came back to find my boss (former assistant manager of the store I had been at to begin with) had been transferred. My new boss had driven off or fired most of our crew, and he cut my hours so low I couldn't eat or pay my rent, even if I chose between the two. My wife had just given birth to our first child. His justification was that he could pay someone minimum wage to do what I was doing and maximize his bonus. Within a week (in the middle of a recession) I found a job paying 50% more hourly, with opportunities for overtime, and quit. For some reason the jerk got mad when I did so.
I came back about a year later. The guy who cut my hours had driven the restaurant into the ground. He had reversed all of our sales increases in about four weeks and it never recovered. It closed in six months. So I ended up back at the restaurant I had started at. I worked there, along with another job at the same time due to financial need, and finished up college at the same time.
They offered me my own restaurant on the same day I brought in my two weeks notice because I wanted to finish up school with only one job, and try to get into medical school. It was an awkward moment, with the district manager offering me a promotion to general manager, and me responding with handing him my type-written two week notice.
In the next year the Eugene stores all closed, then the rest died a slow death.
My wife and I moved to Salem in the interrim when it became apparent that it would be a bad idea to go to medical school with three children I tried to frequent Bob's in Salem. I have no idea what went on in the Salem stores during all this. Around 1995 or 1996 or so, it was clear to me that they were on their last legs. I'd see garbage on their floors, the windows were filthy, something that NEVER would have been tolerated before. I made one last visit to one in West Salem, and it was pathetic. The staff was slovenly and apathetic. The restaurant was dirty. The food was awful.
I have drawn a number of lessons from all this. The search for the almighty dollar is futile. If your pursue quality and excellence, the dollars will follow. If you pursue the dollar, quality and excellence will suffer and the dollar will never come. You can never pursue the dollar because it will be a futile pursuit. Give it up. Be the best at what you do, and all things come then. At one time Bob's really was the best at what they did. When they stopped pursuing quality in search of the dollar, they lost everything.