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Success Stories: Larry Durrett
Yum has 1,300 franchisees, most with just one brand. With the advent of multibranding a few years ago many found themselves with two brands. But only a scant handful—11 to be precise—own and operate all five of the Yum brands. One of the largest is Larry Durrett, a Texas businessman with a spread of 86 A&W, KFC, Long John Silver's, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell restaurants stretching from the Lower Rio Grande Valley up through East Texas and into the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. In the mid-70s there were two competing Mexican-based fast food chains in Durrett's hometown of Fort Worth. Both seemed to have a lot of potential. One was PepsiCo's Taco Bell and the other was ConAgra's Taco Plaza. "Taco Bell was already in the markets I had targeted, so I took the Taco Plaza brand to East Texas," he says. But Taco Bell proved to be the stronger brand and eventually ConAgra sold Taco Plaza to Taco Bell. "Even though I did very well by going to places where Taco Bell was not already present, Taco Bell won in the end." But it was not the end for Durrett. Taco Bell kept many of the Taco Plaza locations and gave its franchisees the opportunity to franchise Taco Bell units. "All I had to do was change the signs," he says. By the mid-90s, he bought 15 more Taco Bells from PepsiCo to add to the 40 he owned at that time. Then he started converting some of his small-town Taco Bells into KFC/Taco Bells. He also did some TPXs by putting pizza ovens into Taco Bell units and selling Personal Pan Pizzas and breadsticks along with tacos and burritos. Durrett was establishing his Lower Rio Grande Valley business in places like Brownsville, Harlingen and McAllen near the Mexican border. "We had all Taco Bells there at the time," he says, "but we did some market research and were amazed to find that the chain that did the best down there was Long John Silver's." That region is 95% Hispanic and predominately Roman Catholic. It was Long John Silver's best performing market in the country. "So I called up Long John Silver's people and asked them to let me franchise one of their restaurants," Durrett recalls. This was before Yum acquired Long John Silver's. They suggested, instead, that he add Long John Silver's to a Taco Bell unit. Through a series of discussions, Emil Brolick and David Novak eventually agreed, and Durrett remodeled a Taco Bell in Edinburgh to add the Long John Silver's brand. It went from a restaurant doing $10,000 a week to one that did $21,000 a week. During Lent the restaurant jumped to nearly $40,000 a week. He did another such conversion earlier this year and took a Taco Bell in Pharr from $14,000 a week to $28,000 with the addition of Long John Silver's. "The conversion is certainly worth it when you can instantly double your business," Durrett says. He got into the A&W business when he needed a concept for a parcel of land he had bought but which he later concluded was too near an existing Taco Bell. "We thought A&W could be a good partner for Long John Silver's and now we have two of those in good markets," Durrett says. Having all five of Yum's brands in his portfolio makes future growth easier. "You can avoid opening a new restaurant too near an existing one of the same brand," he says. "And you can offer more variety to your customers." |
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