Experience behind the counter continues to be regarded as a prerequisite to an executive position in operations, and once that firsthand understanding has been cultivated, the company is loathe to let it wither. Each year, many of BNEI's 140 headquarters personnel -- accountants, engineers, vice-presidents, and so on -- put on a brown Hardee's uniform and return to the field for a week. "It's our way of reminding ourselves what's really important," says someone who has done it. "That person standing in front of the counter is our chairman of the board."
"Nick and I have always had a strong feeling for people, for treating them fair and treating them right," says Mayo. "That came from our upbringing, our parents." It is a simple philosophy, the corporate equivalent of the Golden Rule -- demanding that others produce and perform as you would like them to, and rewarding them in kind. And it has served everyone well. A generous benefits package, company outings, and free trips for star employees whet everyone's enthusiasm. Area managers, some of whom have no more than eighth-grade educations, may earn as much as $35,000 a year. And Jenkins, as well as others, are symbols of the fact that hard work and ambition can ultimately pay off with a role in management.
The brothers, although adventurous, have been conservative financially; until the late 1960s, for example, BNEI headquarters was a converted laundry room at Carleton House. And indeed, in its 22 years, the company has had only two losing months, in 1974. "Mr. Noell like to had a tizzy," Nick recalls, pausing for a moment to define the North Carolinian's word for a fit. "He never came to operating meetings, but he began to come then." Only recently, the company obtained a $40-million line of revolving credit, making it an unsecured corporate borrower; until then it borrowed only on mortgages. "We never grew beyond our organization," observes Nick.
But grow they did. BNEI is now the largest privately held franchise company in the Hardee's system. It consistently outperforms both other-franchisees and most of the parent's owned-and-operated stores: In fiscal '83, it averaged $979,000 per store in sales, as opposed to an average of $700,000 for other Hardee's operations. (Franchise Enterprises Inc., the closest local competitor, averages $875,000). It has a five-year compound annual growth rate of 22.4% in sales, 29.6% in assets, and 22.3% in net income.
Franchise companies often plateau at about 10 franchises, a size that many bright, hardworking businesspeople can manage by themselves. Growing BNEI to 208 restaurants has required a range of disciplines and a depth of expertise beyond those the Boddies alone could provide. They are the founders, the inspirers, the fatherly figures on whom employees model their approach; they are men who discovered the thrill and the opportunities of entrepreneurship long before the word swelled to mythic proportions. But they also sensed the entrepreneur's limits. "We knew how to buy locations, get buildings built, and sell hamburgers," Mayo explains, "but as we got bigger, we knew that we were going to have to buy some sophistication.
"Computers have come in in the last few years," he continues, "and we still don't know what it's all about. We're entrepreneurial -- we just go out and bust our ass." Both, however, were secure and commonsensical enough to share the management of BNEI with others.
"Nick and Mayo recognized that their child was growing into a major organization," notes Jim Waters, who was an executive with Planters National Bank & Trust Co. in Rocky Mount before becoming BNEI's executive vice-president for administration in 1976. "They didn't want to stifle the entrepreneurial spirit, but they wanted to bring certain disciplines to bear on the company." In recent years, the contributions of Waters and other managers have ranged from the mundane and the practical (job classifications new departments, financial planning) to the inspired. In the latter category are BNEI's new $3.6-million headquarters, a breathtaking building of Alabama limestone; and a management information system that is considered by many to be the most advanced in the country.
Headquarters, a 45,000-square-foot celebration of modern office design, occupied in late '82, is the product of five years of planning, and of the imagination and expertise of Dove-Knight & Associates, a Rocky Mount architectural firm. "Boddie-Noell is a unique organization," notes architect Dan Knight. "They're laid-back but hardworking, with a very open management -- an ideal corporation. We tried to capture some of those qualities in our design."
The building, set atop a small knoll at the end of a grove of pecan trees (the grove is all that remains of the plantation that once stood on the spot), straddles a diamond-shaped atrium of dark tinted glass. "We wanted the building to look as though it was firmly rooted, but at the same time moving, dynamic," explains director of public relations Ray Leister. The first floor, although located beneath ground level, looks out onto sunken patios; it houses BNEI's operations and development groups, along with a luxurious gymnasium for employees (who get a day off for every 25 miles they log on an outdoor track). The ground-level floor, one flight up, holds training and marketing group offices, a cafeteria, a test kitchen, and, at its very center, the data-processing heartbeat of the building, which Waters refers to, quite tellingly, as "The Machine." Upstairs are the accounting offices and executive suites, all of which open onto a central reception area floored in mellow heart pine.
