Albert Okura The Chicken Man
With a 50 year Plan
by
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CHAPTER 7 PG 33 “1970 - I was attending Los Angeles Junior College and realized I didn’t have money for gas or other expenses. I went to the job placement department at the college and looked for part time work. The job position that interested me the most was Burger King. I didn’t know it at the time but Florida based Burger King was the second largest hamburger chain in America. The college made an appointment for a job interview. Mike Edwards the Restaurant Supervisor at the Harbor City location interviewed me and hired me for part time work at a pay rate of one dollar and fifteen cents per hour. I ate my first quarter pound Whopper that day and thought it was delicious. I was happy making thirty to forty dollars a week because that was much better than the thirty dollars a month I used to make delivering newspapers.” CHAPTER 15 PG 72 “We started the project in October 1983 and by December we were close to completion. Uncle George told me I had to set a firm date to open otherwise I would get cold feet and never open. We set the date to open the first week in January 1984. In the meantime I was worried about the rotisserie cooker and cooking the chickens. The cooker we ordered arrived two weeks before our grand opening. Armando figured out how to put the machine together and since I didn’t know how to prepare the chicken for cooking I was worried about the recipe. I told Armando he better do something quick! The first thing he did was cook a chicken with chicken with no seasoning so he could taste a chicken in its natural state. Armando spent the next week buying a multitude of spices, salts, seasoning, prepared blends of spices, and anything else he could think of to provide flavor. Armando told me that his goal was to enhance the natural flavor of the chicken. He did not want to have an ethnic flavor. He wanted our chicken to spark a memory in people’s taste buds of their favorite chicken. Armando was successful with his marinade. Many customers in the early days claimed it was the best chicken they ever ate! We have not changed our original recipe or cut corners on our marinating process. Armando was always supremely confident of his abilities and it was with good fortune or maybe destiny that I met him. Life Lesson Learned: You have to keep your eyes and ears open because the right person may walk into your life.” CHAPTER 18 PG 86 “After our grand opening we never had a sales day over one thousand dollars. Daily sales ranged from six hundred to nine hundred dollars. Nine months later I called Armando and asked for advice. He came over and said he knew what the problem was; our prices were too low and he suggested we raise them. I was shocked. I always thought cheaper was better. Figuring I had nothing to lose prices were raised. The very next day we did one thousand three hundred dollars. I couldn’t believe it! Whether it was luck, coincidence, or Armando’s logic, I realized that a change in attitude was the most important ingredient for increased sales. This experience was the turning point for Juan Pollo. I stopped waiting for things to happen and took a very aggressive approach. This included stepping up quality control, streamlining our menu (no more french fries, jello, hot dogs, etc.) and telling the employees that they needed to be able to increase production every day. 1985 - This was a year of growth. Sales steadily increased. Our food preparations were being refined and the consistency improved dramatically. January sales for that year totaled seventeen-thousand dollars. By November the sales rose to over thirty-three thousand dollars. At the end of the year I knew that Juan Pollo was the destiny that I have been searching for my whole life. Life Lesson Learned: Destiny can guide you to make the right decisions in life.” CHAPTER 32 PG 151 “1998 - Juan Pollo kept me so busy I rarely had time to read the daily newspaper. One June Sunday I happened to buy the San Bernardino Sun and discovered that the site of the original McDonald’s was in foreclosure and no one wanted it. It had experienced many failed escrows. Although the original restaurant was demolished in 1972 the property included a refurbished 4,000 square foot commercial building and the remnants of the original golden arches street sign. At one hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars I knew I had to buy the property. The following Monday I called a realtor friend and made an offer to buy. I didn’t really know what I would do with the building but I sensed that I would get much free press and the publicity alone would be worth the price. The day I closed escrow there were two articles in the San Bernardino Sun and a front page story in the Riverside Press Enterprise telling of the purchase of the site by me. Even all the news radio station KNX from Los Angeles mentioned the purchase every hour. One of the newspaper columns said I was going to open a McDonald’s Museum. I decided to move our corporate offices into the building and at the same time take the newspapers’ idea to open an unofficial McDonald’s Museum.”
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About the Book
At a growth rate of baby chick to full adult in less than two months, chickens are one of the fastest growing food source known to man. It seems that chickens were put on earth to supply the world’s population with eggs and meat. This book tells the story of Albert Okura’s belief that his destiny in life is to sell more chickens than anyone else in the world. Although sounding preposterous at first glance, it needs to be noted that Colonel Sanders did not sell his first franchise until he was 60 years old. Albert was born in 1951 and grew up with the fledgling fast food industry. His first full time job was working at Burger King as a hamburger cook. Recognizing that mental toughness as well as the ability to train, develop, and motivate others was critical for long term success, Albert gravitated to those who inspired him. Lessons learned from life experiences helped him realize his destiny. In 1984, at the age of 32, Albert opened a rotisserie chicken restaurant with help from his uncle. Albert has become Southern California’s foremost expert on mass producing, tender and moist rotisserie chickens. Juan Pollo is now poised to go into the bigtime. This is their story.
About the Author
Albert Okura has been involved in the fast food industry as a consumer, employee, manager, or owner since McDonald’s Hamburgers burst upon the scene in the 1950’s and 1960’s. When it came time to write his own story about opportunity and potential, he did not want someone interpreting his thoughts so he wrote the way he runs his rotisserie chicken business – short, sweet, and to the point. As a youth Albert read many inspirational books and autobiographies of the rich and successful. He realizes that the book business has seen tremendous changes. In order to attract young entrepreneurs to join his quest to become the #1 ChickenMan, he keeps the writing to a minimum and includes the right amount of pictures to create accurate visuals. A picture is still worth a thousand words. The book is the “bait.” Albert is fishing for the talent to take his company to the next levels. Albert identified 40 chapters of his life he needed to spotlight. He tries to make each chapter a short story in itself and includes a life lesson learned.