THE GOLDEN RULE

BY RICK HYNUM | PHOTOS COURTESY DONATOS

As a young entrepreneur in the early 1960s, Jim Grote, founder of Columbus, Ohio-based Donatos, was advised to be tough in business and tender at home. He took only half of that supposedly wise counsel to heart—the second part—and still went on to build a pizza empire that’s growing to this day. Now, his daughter, Jane Grote Abell, manages the company with the same firm, steady yet gentle hand. As Donatos’ executive chairwoman, she carries another title that matters just as much to her: chief purpose officer. For Abell, running a business without making a positive social impact is like preaching from the Bible and leaving out Jesus.

Not that she’s the preachy type: Like her dad, Abell would rather do good than proselytize about it. And Donatos’ success—the company currently has 430-plus locations in more than half of the U.S. states, with many more in the pipeline—offers lessons that other restaurant corporations would be smart to learn. Abell and the Grote family call it “agape capitalism.” Chat will her for a while, and it’s clear that’s not just some marketing buzzword for Abell. She means it. And she’s very, very good at it.

Growing Up at Donatos

A lot of pizzerias claim to treat their patrons like kin, but Grote, who opened the first Donatos store on the south side of Columbus in 1963, took that idea one step further. As the 1,800-square-foot pizzeria got busier over the next several years, the wait for Grote’s pies got longer. The restaurant had no dining room, but

Grote and his growing family lived next door. “So when customers would come for a pizza, he always sent them back to our house to wait,” Abell recalls. “And I give so much credit to my mom, looking back on it now. Every night, she opened up that front door and welcomed our customers in. Our dining room and living room were filled with customers every night waiting for their pizza. My dad would call back and let them know when their pizza was ready, but oftentimes they just stayed and hung out with us.”

For Abell and her three siblings, their living room became a classroom in restaurant management. “You learn a lot about hospitality when you’re inviting your customers into your home, not just your restaurant,” Abell reflects.

“I also thought that was normal. I had no idea that other people didn’t live like that.”

Abell fondly remembers the light from the Donatos sign casting a reddish

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Visit smithfieldculinary.com/margherita or contact a sales rep at 888-327-6526 glow in her bedroom every night. She also remembers that, from the start, her dad had big ambitions for Donatos, despite his humble—and homey—approach to entrepreneurship. “At nighttime, my dad would come get us, and he’d take us out in our pajamas and stand under that big sign. He would talk about growing Donatos all over. He never went into business just wanting to have one pizza shop. He was always about growth. He always said, ‘We’re going to be around the world one day.’ But he never said, ‘And we’re going to have an exit strategy’ or ‘We’re going to make this or that amount of money.’ Wherever we did business, we would bring our principles to work with us, and we were going to give back to the community.”

Before opening Donatos at 19, Grote had worked for other restaurateurs, including two partners with very different management styles. “One gentleman served the same pizza consistently every single night,” Abell says. “He took care of his customers, the community and his associates, and my dad saw at an early age that those nights were busier. But when the other gentleman was working, he took toppings off the pizza or watered down the sauce to get more pizzas out of it, and my dad saw those nights were slower.”

That wasn’t how Grote, as a customer, wanted to be treated. And he took the Golden Rule seriously. It’s the core philosophy of Donatos, a Latin word that means “to give a good thing.”

“That’s the principle he founded the business on,” Abell says. “He would talk about bringing his principles to work with him and making sure you treated others the way you wanted to be treated. His older mentors would say, ‘You can’t do that. You can’t bring those goody-two-shoes principles to work. You’re in business, and you have to get the other guy before he gets you.’ But he knew that wasn’t how he wanted to do business.”

Doing the Right Thing

Over time, true to Grote’s vision, Donatos grew from that one little store into a Midwest colossus without ever sacrificing its core values. Meanwhile, more family members joined the fold, including Grote’s four children, plus their mother, grandfather, uncles and cousins. As a student at Ohio State, Abell worked in the campus location, then went full-time and became Donatos’ chief people officer (she didn’t much care for corporate jargon like “human resources”).

By 1990, Donatos had launched its franchise program, and things really took off. The family chose their franchisees carefully, always with an eye toward giving back to every community with a Donatos location. “There are a lot of people out there with money, but that’s not who we’re looking for,” Abell says. “Yes, they need to have money. But we’re really looking for people who are aligned with our values, our purpose, our mission and what we stand for. So we’re pretty particular about who we bring on board, because franchise agreements sometimes last longer than marriages. It’s important that we’re picking the right people to grow with us.”

For Donatos, the right people are those who want to “lead with love” rather than just make a boatload of money. But do that right, Abell believes, and the money will come. The concept is even embedded in the company’s mission statement: “Our mission is to promote goodwill through our products and service, principles and people.”