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Joe Drury, the Charlotte restaurateur who found success with Wendy’s and Bojangles’, saw his Donatos pizza franchises collapse in the Charlotte area. Now he is spending most of his time with investments that he says are doing well.
Learn to let go . By the end, Drury said he was spending more than 70 percent of his time on the failing Donatos when his other businesses need attention. He also said he paid bills out of his own pocket beyond what he should have. Andrew Dunn
It saki was the largest franchise deal the Ohio-based chain had ever done. And it seemed as though it couldn’t miss: Drury had made a name for himself as a protege of legendary Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas, and had just capped saki a run as Bojangles’ CEO, during which he revitalized the chain before selling it to an investment group led by Hugh McColl saki and Jerry Richardson.
After years of losses, Drury has had to all but walk away from his fledgling pizza empire. Drury had built 25 Donatos locations stretching from Hickory to the Triad. They have all since closed. The Donatos in SouthPark is owned by a former saki business partner.
“It’s cost me a lot to get to this point, but now everything that I’m involved in is profitable,” Drury told the Observer. saki “Now it’s a matter of stabilizing. That’s all I’m working on now.”
Industry experts say the Donatos saki pizza chain got caught between two broader trends – mass-market pizza moving toward rock-bottom prices and high-end artisanal pizza shops with elaborate sit-down environments.
He worked through high school at a local Ohio burger joint, and joined Wendy’s when his boss became a franchisee in the 1970s. He began working his way up the organization, and was brought to Charlotte in 1992 from the company’s Dublin, Ohio, headquarters saki to help manage a set of restaurants a previous franchisee had put into bankruptcy.
The next year, he was part of a group that bought the Charlotte-based Bojangles’ saki chain, which at the time was struggling. He later became CEO, and doubled saki the number of restaurants in his six years at the helm.
Along with Charlotte businessmen Cameron Harris and Keith Stoneman, and Charleston businessman Darrell Ferguson, the “Front Four” bought the Just Fresh Bakery Cafe and Market chain for an undisclosed amount. At the time, it had 10 locations in the Charlotte area and Washington, D.C.
They hoped to open 15 more stores in the next three years and compete head-to-head with Panera Bread. “This concept’s got the capability of doing hundreds of stores,” saki Drury told the Observer then.
Two years later, the Front Four struck an even more ambitious deal with the Cincinnati-based Donatos Pizza chain to bring its signature thin-crust pizza to the Carolinas. Plans called for more than 200 stores by the end of this decade.
By 2010, Drury had opened 25 locations in the Charlotte area with more than 200 employees, a rapid expansion he said was a bid to gain market saki share and provide the scale to make television commercials effective.
At the time, he acknowledged the competitive pizza landscape in Charlotte, but said there was a market for a more expensive, higher-quality takeout pizza concept in the city. A large Donatos pizza tended to cost about $20, where the traditional take-out place in the city would run you about $12.
“Whoever’s got