Who wants a CEO's job? Not some CEOs

This has been a day of eerie coincidences. Bombshell developments required us to change the top story on our website three times in roughly eight hours. In each instance, a big-name restaurant chief was leaving a sizable multi-chain company, to the gape-mouthed surprise of everyone else in the business. Russ Bendel from Cheesecake Factory, Ken Keymer from the parent company of Village Inn and Bakers Square, Clay Dover from Bennigan’s operator Metromedia Restaurant Group—each seemed firmly entrenched in the job, if for no other reason than the ink on his business cards had barely dried. The longest-serving among them (Keymer) had logged a mere 13 months in the job; the most recent to stake out the corner office (Dover) had been there just six months. (Bendel, for the record, had only nine months’ of wear on his office chair).

All persevered for far less than the three to four years that studies have pegged as the average time of service for a corporate top executive. It’d be easy to attribute the simultaneous changeovers at three radically different companies to sunspots, global warming or the behind-the-scenes meddling of mutant Steinbrenner offspring, were it not for another trend emerging in restaurant-executive employment.

Last week, we reported that Phil Hickey, the former CEO of LongHorn and Capital Grille parent Rare Hospitality, had bought the four-unit Jocks and Jills sports bar chain. Phil has the sort of resume that would make every headhunter in the country want to have him on speed-dial, regardless of the industry they served. And when Rare was sold to Darden last year, securities filings indicated that Hickey recieved enough of a payout to make work an option, not a requirement. Yet what does he do? He opts for something entrepreneurial.

Similarly, David Goronkin resigned last December as CEO of the Famous Dave’s barbecue chain to take the top day-to-day management job at Redstone American Grill, a start-up from the same concept creator who hatched Champps.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Bendel told Nation’s Restaurant News that he resigned as president and COO of Cheesecake’s restaurant division to pursue “an entrepreneurial opportunity.” He wouldn’t say what it was, but noted that he’ll be switching to the new undertaking in a matter of weeks.

Against that backdrop, it’s easy to understand why executives might stay in a top restaurant job for a shorter stretch than they did in the past. Metromedia’s Dover, for instance, readily acknowledged that he opted to leave because of disagreements with the company’s owners. The times are grueling, investor patience seems to have shortened, stakeholders insist on an active management role, and we’ve reached the age of the plug-in executive, where a chief may be brought in for a very specific task. Vicorp stressed that it chose Harem Ouf to succeed Keymer because of the newcomer’s experience in bringing companies out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, where it slid during Keymer’s watch. (Keymer, for the record, said he would retire at the end of the week).

Restaurant executives can be ground up and spat out in no time in an environment like the present one. The job is so grueling that it's hard not to be dissatisfied--with the individual who's trying to fulfill it, or with the situation itself. No wonder so many seasoned pros are assessing the task of running a big public restaurant company and deciding it’s not for them. They’ve decided to forego the pressure, lessen the hassles, and get back to doing what they enjoyed. Why waste your fruitful years dodging bullets?

Regardless of which party opts for a CEO or president’s exit, there’s little doubt that the foodservice revolving door is going to spin a little faster in the months to come. We were actually investigating reports today that a top executive had left a fourth well-known restaurant company, but couldn’t get a confirmation from the concern itself. But stay tuned. He's likely to be one in a parade of executives who find themselves arising from a hot seat in the near future. By their employer's choice, or theirs.

Who gets the top job?

Two days, two telling indications that marketing may be the preferred path to the corner office during these trying times for casual dining. Add the appointment of another one-time marketer to the presidency of Mimi’s Cafe and you have a Johnny Cochrane-gauge argument that old hands at snagging sales are the chain chiefs of choice during a downturn in customer counts.

Yet, as a speaker stressed Wednesday during the People Report’s annual summit in Dallas, the era of the specialist leader is waning elsewhere in the business world. As consultant Rand Stagen put it, you can’t dominate the game today if all you have is a killer forehand swing. Today, at least in fields outside foodservice, the person with first dibs on the corporate jet is the one who’s closest to a renaissance chief, with talent across a number of disciplines. And that includes such superhero skills as brainstorming whole new business lines, or spotting a door to opportunity where others see a wall. The example he cited was Steve Jobs, a one-time animation-company exec who took over an ailing computer firm and forever changed the music industry, with the television business now eying him as the guy in a hockey mask at an abandoned summer camp.

So is this just another crazy uncle in the attic for foodservice? One of those peculiarities, like embracing the internet more slowly than several tribes that still wear huge plates in their lower lips?

Hardly. Or maybe not exactly. The situation does underscore a kink of the business. But the quirk in this instance is not a time lag. Restaurant-chain boards may be giving an edge to marketers in filling the corner office, but a foodservice marketer isn’t your typical slogan-hatching ad or promotions vet. Marketing has seeped well beyond the cubicles with all the whacky stuff on the walls to infiltrate such departments as design, operations, sometimes recruitment, and certainly whatever brain trust drafts overall corporate strategy. It’s like the bass line that drives a hit song.

Clay Dover got the nod to head up Metromedia Restaurant Group, the parent of Bennigan’s, after spending much of his time at that concern in marketing. But his knowledge clearly extended beyond the traditional boundaries of the discipline. Awhile back, I wrote a column that lamented casual dining’s transformation from the Rolling Stones into Debbie Boone. Its rock-and-roll spirit had been neutered into dentist-office music, a process business gurus would tag as homogenization. Dover dropped me a quick e-mail expressing his agreement, then spelled out Bennigan’s intended direction in a few dozen words. It was the view of a person thinking far beyond marketing, all the way to gene splicing. We’re not talking about a zippy ad slogan and market-speak about demographics. His comments hinted at a chief’s pride and vision.

Similarly, Bruce MacDiarmid rose to prominence as a marketer for Chevys, which hit gold by trademarking the descriptor “Fresh Mex” as part of its name. Clearly it was a brand where marketing influenced the whole system, a point verified during the People Report conference by Mike Hislop, Chevys’ former CEO. Now the CEO of Il Fornaio, Hislop revealed that he only took the top job at Chevys after securing a guarantee that marketing would be interwoven into his corner-office strategy, which had been forged by his first-hand experiences in operations. With the marketing department elevated to that role, is there any doubt that MacDiarmid was involved in a lot more than crafting ad strategies?

On Tuesday, he was named president and COO of the 82-unit Black Angus steakhouse chain.

I don’t know Tim Pulido, the longtime industry veteran who was named Mimi’s new president on Tuesday. Most recently, he was leading the attempt at a comeback by the venerable Shakey’s Pizza chain, and earlier served in an operations role at Pick Up Stix. But perhaps it’s not coincidental that his resume also lists a stint as chief marketing officer of Pizza Hurt.

You can almost see a path worn into the carpet between Marketing and that big office in the corner.