Selling the sizzle: Ken Cole took the top job at Sizzler USA after asking investment bankers. 'You have to fix it without breaking it,' one of them told him.

Ken Cole, the son of West Virginian railroader, is the ultimate small town success story. He's gone from soda jerk to chief executive of Sizzler USA. Cole grew up in Grafton, W. Va., a town of less than 8,000 people. It's the kind of place where everyone knows each other, and Cole got the soda jerk gig from a neighbor whose lawn he mowed. Shortly thereafter, Cole jumped to A&P supermarkets where he held a series of positions. With A&P facing tough competition from bigger chains, he searched for a career in an industry that had room to grow and decided on the restaurant business. Eventually, Cole was working for some of the country's most successful restaurant operators, including Bonanza and Ponderosa L both later wrapped into Metromedia Steakhouses Co. LP--and Damon's International Inc. Almost five years ago, he went to Sizzler to turn around the ailing steak and seafood specialist. Sizzler had overextended by buying up other restaurant chains. It filed to reorganize in bankruptcy court in 1995 and has since emerged. Cole has led the chain through a full-scale renovation of its 232 U.S. units and recently helped take the company private. Sizzler has just moved its headquarters from Sherman Oaks to Culver City. Despite the 52-year-old's lofty goals, the employees who see Cole frequently lunching at the Sizzler in Los Feliz simply call him Mr. Ken.

Question: You often have had to travel for work, and work far away from your hometown. Is that difficult?

Answer: It was hard, because I do come from a large family. I have 31 first cousins on my mom's side, and we are all really close. My mother has the smallest family, and I have one brother and two sisters. Most of my family has stayed in the West Virginia area. It was hard to work elsewhere because I couldn't get home for the Memorial Days, the birthdays and the Fourth of Julys. So today, I plan my vacations around those days.

Q: What was your family like when you were young?

A: My father was a railroader and my mother was a housewife. Even if you had your part-time jobs, you had your jobs around the house. They always wanted to set their children up for a better life. The thing they preached was, get a good education and work hard. One of my very first jobs, my boss said, "Were you in the military?" I said, "No, but my mom has us in church every Sunday. We worked hard and we told the truth."

Q: Tell me about Grafton, the town you grew up in.

A: The area I came from was into coal mining and railroading. It is a real blue-collar town. The thing that you have is an incredible work ethic. When you come from a small town, you work incredibly hard to get out of there. Then, you work incredibly hard to retire back there. I own a 100-acre ranch back there that my wife and 1 fly to every month. Eventually, someday, I plan to retire there.

Q: Did you know anyone involved in the coal mining accident last January? Were there previous accidents that impacted you?

A: The one gentleman who survived in the group of 11, he went to the same high school as me. His children play soccer with my grandkids. There was only one (accident) I remember growing up. A friend of mine maybe had 13 kids in their family. They lost their father. They had to seal the mine to keep it from exploding. That was pretty devastating to the community. When the woman whose husband had died came into the store, our manager bought all her groceries for her.

Q: You have been married to your wife, Vickie, for 32 years. How did you meet her?

A: I knew her all through school and we never really dated. In my graduating class, there were 120 people. She was real popular, a cheerleader and homecoming queen. I was real shy. I thought she would shoot me down. There is a huge lake in my hometown. We were boating one afternoon. We had a few beers and I saw Vicki. I asked her out. Had I not had a few beers, I would probably not have asked her out.

Q: How did you start in the restaurant business?

A: I worked as a soda jerk. Unfortunately, no one tipped you. We were making 75 cents an hour. The (A&P) grocery store was paying $1.65. That was a huge increase. I worked there from high school through college. I did their management trainee program. They were infiltrating the company with young blood, and they were shutting down stores around the country. They would call 27-year-old managers and say they would transfer you somewhere else hoping you would quit. I remember one day I got a call from my replacement before I got a call from my supervisor. That got me looking at other industries. I saw restaurants with huge lines, and I thought that is where I want to be.

Q: You seem to be very strategic about your career choices.

A: Absolutely. I do an enormous amount of research. Today, even what we have done here to move the Sizzler brand, is done through an enormous amount of research. I think that is what it's all about. You have one chance in going through life, so you want to make sure you put all of your time and effort into it. You don't get back time you've wasted. I wanted to make sure the company I went to was reputable, the sort of cuisine I was going into had legs and that it would be worth my while, that I would certainly learn as well as being able to contribute.

Q: Early on in your career, you worked for the restaurant company Bonanza, but then switched to rival Ponderosa. Why?

A: I wanted to get into full service. I was looking at Friday's, the hottest thing on the block at the time. Bennigan's was probably the next in size. Then, I was lookin.g at Casa Lupita (owned by Ponderosa.) The Mexican segment was the fastest-growing segment in the industry. What Casa Lupita was doing, there was nobody out there doing it at the time. I always respected Ponderosa as an organization, from having competed against them. They always made good long-term business decisions for being a public company. And even though they had the financial power behind them, (Casa Lupita) was a startup with a small group of people.

Q: You helped expand Casa Lupita from four to 21 units. What were some things you learned along the way?

A: What works on one coast doesn't necessarily work on the other. Back then, people perceived Mexican food as hot and spicy. They were confusing spicy with flavorful. I was educating people that spicy wasn't necessarily jalapeno peppers that were going to burn your mouth. It was bold in flavors. When you are in the Northwest, you don't get sour cream with your food. It is more of a health conscious thing. When you bring the same recipes to the Midwest, you'd better have some. Those idiosyncrasies are dominant in one coast and not dominant in the other.

Q: Your experience at Casa Lupita was very influential in your career. What people there shaped your perspective?

A: Gordon Teeter, who ended up being the CEO of Wendy's, who died a few years ago; he was our vice president of franchise development and ended up becoming our president. Emil Brolick, who is the president of Taco Bell, was the vice president of marketing. Ed Ourant, who actually hired us all, was executive vice president of Wendy's (and) is retired now. Some of the people I got to meet and work with on a personal basis are great leaders in the industry today. I learned how to be more strategic. Emil Brolick was probably the most strategic man I ever met. He lays his plan out for the next three to four years and has contingency after contingency. Failure is not an option. You never give up, and you never accept mediocrity. You fail fast and you move on. Those were some of the great lessons from that group of gentlemen that I have carried with me today.

Q: Ponderosa was the subject of an unfriendly takeover. What was that like for you?

A: It is like giving your baby up to adoption. Everybody knew in the Casa Lupita brand they were going to spin us to somebody. They sold it to a good company, Grisanti's out of Louisville, Ky. They were a small, Italian chain that had maybe two dozen stores. They looked at the architecture and looked at the real estate we had and said, "We can convert these to Italian restaurants." That's what they did. It was very sad, because everyone had worked really hard for four years. We were making changes to make the restaurant better.

To see somebody buy it for the real estate was very heart wrenching.

Q: What did you do after that?

A: Our whole industry is made of connections. A gentleman who had worked with me at Casa Lupita had moved back to Columbus, Ohio. He had left the company about a year before I did. He went to work for a small rib chain called Damon's. It was entrepreneurial in spirit. There were maybe a dozen restaurants. I went and looked at it, researched barbecue. At the time, there was one national chain, Tony Roma's, and other than that, there was a small regional chain. When I looked at Damon's, I thought, gosh, this really has legs. I interviewed with the franchisee, and we hit it off. He brought me in as an equity partner and started building the Damon's brand. Ironically, we were about two years into it, and we were going to outgrow our parent company. I said we ought to buy these guys. We were able to buy out the parent company and grew that from 18 stores to 150 within 13 years.

Q: You left Damon's and headed Santa Clara-based Blue Chalk Cafe. Why did you decide to join Sizzler after Blue Chalk Cafe?

A: Sizzler had got a lot of bad press in the industry because of its bankruptcy and a lot of things that had gone on with the brand. They had made a couple of bad acquisitions of some larger chains. They went into the buffet court business to try to change their concept. When I first heard about them, I called a couple of my friends in the investment banking industry and asked them if they could research the brand for me. I said, one, can it be turned around? Two, if I go there, will it hurt my name in the industry? And three, is it something worth doing? They came back to me and said Sizzler has better awareness with its consumers than it does in the industry. I will never forget, one of my analyst friends told me, "Ken, you have to fix it without breaking it, because it is has been through several zigs and zags. You have to make sure everything is relevant to the core as well as what you want to do with the skip generation." It came back green lights.

Q: You talk a lot about the "skip generation." How do you define that term?

A: They grew up going to Sizzler with their parents, but when they came of age, there was the proliferation of other restaurants. Sizzler had become a buffet. Quality had been cut. So, it wasn't as relevant to that skip generation. That is the generation we are going after through our remodels and our food and facilities. That is what we started attacking four years ago.

Q: Are you drawn to turnaround under-performing companies?

A: It is just a lot of fun. You get a lot more satisfaction out of your work, the satisfaction of seeing the franchisees' business move forward, the brand's business move forward and seeing what's happening in the restaurants with your customers. There are a lot of great restaurant chains out there that run so well, but I mean going to an Outback today, what are you going to be doing? You are going to be maintaining a great standard that they have set forward. If you go to a Cheesecake Factory, they are the cream of the crop. What kind of impact can you really have? Coming to an organization that really needs a fresh look or different steering, that is what it is all about and seeing the end results.

Q: World Restaurant Concepts, the parent company of Sizzler, recently went private. How has that affected what you do?

A: We certainly can look for longer-term solutions. We are not chasing quarterly earnings. We all (senior managers) invested our money back into this deal. It definitely changes the mentality in terms of how everybody looks at the business, and it definitely gives us a longer view. As a management team, we can increase our ownership as life goes on. It truly makes everyone act like an owner. We look at ourselves as a startup.

Q: You often eat in your company's restaurants. Why?

A: You have to experience it from a guest's perspective, because the view that a manager has is completely different from the view a guest has. You learn how important music is, how important temperature is. Your carpets look a lot different. You see under the table sitting at this level, and it looks messy to a guest. A manager running around trying to do his or her job, they don't see under the table. As a guest, you see and feel these things. You can look around and tell from the expressions of your guests whether they are enjoying (heir experience or not.

Q: What are your favorite dishes at Sizzler?

A: I actually have two favorites. It is our barbecue ribs and our hamburger. I love In & Out, but our hamburger is the best.

Ken Cole

Title: Chief Executive

Company: Sizzler USA

Birth: 1954; Sutton, W.VA.

Education: B.A. in business administration, Fairmont State University, W. VA.

Career Turning Point: Going to work for Ponderosa as zone manager for the Casa Lupita chain

Most Admired People: Vickie Cole, wife; Martha Shanabarger, mother; Ed Ourant, boss at Casa Lupita; Jim Mintzer, chairman of Damon's International Inc.

Hobbies: Spending time in West Virginia with family, boating

Personal: Married; one daughter, two grandsons, three granddaughters