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Hall of Fame Laureate: Charles Valluzzo

Age: 68

Accomplishments: Opened his first Baton Rouge McDonald’s on Plank Road south of Airline Highway in 1963; today, he owns 53 restaurants from St. Francisville to Destrehan; has won numerous corporate awards, including the prestigious “Golden Arch Award” in 1984; has served on the boards of numerous area organizations, including Our Lady of the Lake Foundation, Alzheimer’s Services of the Capital Area, Baton Rouge Area Foundation, Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, Senior Olympics and Boy Scouts of America.

To say Charles Valluzzo was lucky or that he happened to be in the right place at the right time would be something of an understatement. Thanks to a combination of fate and family connections, he got in on the McDonald’s operation as a franchisee when the fast-food restaurant chain was but a blip on the national radar.

But to chalk up Valluzzo’s considerable success—he now owns 53 McDonald’s outlets between St. Francisville and Destrehan and is one of the bigger franchise-holders in the country—to anything other than his own talents and abilities would be a mistake.

While Valluzzo might have had the fortune of starting out in a good place, everything he’s accomplished has come because of his killer work ethic, keen instincts for running a business and commitment to core values that keep money and prestige from corrupting him or going to his head.

“He is incredible,” says his son, John Valluzzo, who has taken over day-to-day operations of the family business from his father and has worked with him since the mid-1980s. “I’ve never seen any other human being like him—and I’ve spent more waking hours with him than just about anyone.”

If you’ve never heard of Charles Valluzzo, you haven’t been around Baton Rouge very long. Though he’s not from one of the city’s old, established families, he runs with the best of them and has served on the boards of every significant social and civic organization in town, including the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, the Wilbur Marvin Foundation, Our Lady of the Lake, the Junior League Advisory Board and the Catholic High Foundation.

Moreover, McBR Management is one of the top 20 private companies in the city with estimated revenues in excess of $154 million and some 2,750 employees. It’s known for supporting and sponsoring community events and nonprofit organizations, as well as for taking care of its many hourly workers.

“When you look up at the banner that tells us how many dollars McDonald’s has in its profit and pension plan, it’s multiple millions of dollars,” says Jerry Pearson, a longtime friend and golf buddy of Valluzzo’s. “There’s no one in the community who gives more to the community than Charlie.”

That might sound like the kind fluff one friend would say about another for a print publication. But there’s definitely something genuine about Valluzzo. Unlike many successful, established CEOs, he’s disarmingly low-key and down-to-earth. He doesn’t exude the Alpha male traits of aggressiveness or chauvinism that seem almost universal among corporate big wigs. In fact, he makes it a point not to be like that.

“You’d never know he controls the McDonald’s empire,” Pearson says. “He’s a genuinely warm and interesting individual.”

Perhaps it comes from growing up in the middle-class Midwest in the modest world of post-war America. Born in Ohio, Valluzzo spent his childhood in Battle Creek, Mich., and had what could be considered a fairly typical upbringing. He attended Catholic school and lettered in golf in high school and college. He dabbled in other sports, too, but fellow classmates remember him most as a nose-to-the-grindstone guy—even as a teenager.

“He was a hard worker even in high school,” says Nancy Valluzzo, who has known her husband since second grade when they made their first communion together. “He’s really pretty square, which is something I’ve always admired about him.”

After high school, he attended the University of Michigan but soon transferred to Western Michigan University to be closer to Nancy, who by then had become his sweetheart. They married in 1959 before they’d even finished college. Two years later, armed with a degree in business, he began to look around for jobs.

He had options, though none really excited him—except for one. His father, Rocco Charles Valluzzo, had retired three years earlier at a relatively young age from a practice in dentistry to embark on a second career with a budding fast-food chain called McDonald’s. He’d opened his first restaurant in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and when Charles graduated, his father helped him get a franchise in Joplin, Mo.

The Joplin outlet did a decent business, but the Tuscaloosa restaurant was a different story. It was in a bad location, though it didn’t help matters that the senior Valluzzo didn’t have much business acumen to begin with. Charles Valluzzo remembers his father’s frustration.

“He went to them and said, ‘Hey, guys, I left a lucrative dental practice and this isn’t working,’” Valluzzo recalls. “They said, ‘Doc, we’ve got a deal for you.’”

Turns out, the deal was to open two stores in a new market—Baton Rouge. Father and son sensed it had potential and decided to go for it. They both relocated to south Louisiana, and Charles Valluzzo has been here ever since.

“We happened to be in the right place at the right time,” he says with characteristic modesty. “The company wasn’t even 10 years old when we got here. Our first store was No. 529. Today, they’re up to 40,000 worldwide.”

That first local store opened on Plank Road; the second on West State Street. A third location followed soon thereafter. The corporation had been correct in predicting that Baton Rouge was a good market. The timing was right, too. It was 1963 when the first store opened, and the concept of fast food was beginning to catch on.

But it wasn’t just fortuitous circumstances that made the business work. Unlike his dad, Charles Valluzzo had a keen eye for what it takes to run a business as well as a real understanding of balance sheets, inventory and marketing. Above all, he was a tireless worker and wasn’t afraid of burning the midnight oil. For the first 20-plus years of his business, he worked seven days a week, every week.

“He would never miss church but he would go to work as soon as Mass was over,” Nancy Valluzzo recalls. “He didn’t start taking Sundays off till 1985.”

Valluzzo remembers those years well.

“In the early years, I was managing one store and I’d go home and do all the bookwork and paperwork and payroll for five more stores,” he says. “Many a night, I’d fall asleep in the books at 11 or 12 o’clock at night, and we were growing so fast the money supply was tight, and I remember many weekends I’d say, ‘Lord please don’t let it rain’ because I’d already written the checks.”

The elbow grease gradually paid off. By the end of the 1960s, the company had opened seven stores. It opened another six in the 1970s and 10 more in the 1980s. Some of the biggest growth years came in the 1990s, when it opened 18 more. Today, McBR Management owns and operates 53 stores, twice as many as it did just a decade ago.

While the hard work and dedication were key to the growth, Valluzzo also made some smart moves that enabled him to grow more quickly and efficiently. When his operation grew large enough that he had considerable purchasing clout, for instance, he created his own distribution center. Today, his company is one of just three franchise operations that supplies its own goods. It makes a big difference in terms of cost and the efficiency of operations.

“We’ve taken out the middlemen, so we have control over our own scheduling and ordering,” John Valluzzo says. “It gives us vertical integration.”

Similarly, the company does its own maintenance, rather than having to farm out such work, and also has its own branch for marketing and advertising. That saves money through an economy of scales and gives it a competitive advantage against other franchise holders in the area.

While the growth was constant, which was a good thing in most respects, Charles Valluzzo became something of a victim of his own success. He was growing so much it was hard to ever find time to scale back or take time off.

“We’d get things working well, and the reward was always more stores,” Valluzzo says. “So just about the time you’d feel like you could take a breath, you’d have to start all over again.”

Valluzzo has mixed feelings about the effect it had on his family life. He missed out on a lot, he now says candidly, and would spend more time with his five children if he had a chance to do it all again. Nancy Valluzzo does not disagree.

“I don’t think any of us go through life doing things perfectly and I do think that’s an honest regret with him,” she says.

Despite that fact, Charles Valluzzo’s children appear to have grown up admiring his work ethic. The company’s organizational chart reads like a family tree: son John is in charge of operations as the president of Valluzzo Management, son Chris oversees maintainence and IT as the vice president of Valluzzo Management and son-in-law Fermin Montes de Oca is the president of McBR Distribution. Patrick Valluzzo, the baby of the family, runs a restaurant, as does the eldest grandson, Nicholas Valluzzo.

Having a close-knit family makes a difference, and while Valluzzo may think he spent too much time away from his wife and kids in the early years, they have always been his top priority. Friends describe him as a “family man,” and his wife says she has never doubted his commitment to her and the kids.

“We feel that marriage is permanent,” she says. “There’s no out so you need to work it the best way that works for you, and being faithful to one’s wife and children isn’t something that is optional.”

Charles Valluzzo carries those values of respect and integrity over into the way he treats those who work for him. He is known for taking care of his employees and has one of the most generous pension plans of all the McDonald’s franchise operations. Many of his employees have been with the company since its earliest days, and the average tenure of his restaurant managers is 22 years.

Given his track record, one might assume Valluzzo is all work and no play. But he has found plenty of time over the years for community service, which has always been something he believes in firmly. He has received numerous awards for his efforts, including the Louisiana Red Cross Caring Award, the National Society of Fund Raising Executives Philanthropist of the Year, the Distinguished Citizen of the Year and Volunteer Activist Award.

He also manages to squeeze in time for golf, which remains his favorite pastime and a good way to unwind. Friends say he is competitive on the golf course, though extremely good natured during games as well.

“When we’re partners, he’ll come out sometimes at a really crucial moment in the game with this totally off-the-wall question or comment,” says State Rep. Steve Carter, a longtime golf buddy. “I’ll have to remind him to focus and tell him that we’re there to win.”

But for Valluzzo, winning is not the most important thing; it’s how you play the game. For him, people have always come first, which is perhaps the biggest secret to his success—both in life and in business.

“He is extremely generous and kind,” Pearson says. “He’s truly a wonderful individual.”