Maynard to be inducted into N.C. Business Hall of Fame

James Maynard, an East Carolina University graduate and co-founder of Golden Corral, will be inducted into the North Carolina Business Hall of Fame on Nov. 5 at Charlotte's Westin Hotel.

Inductees are chosen annually by the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce and Junior Achievement of Central Carolinas. This year's class also includes Raleigh businessman and former mayor Smedes York as well as BB&T Chairman John Allison of Winston-Salem.

Maynard grew up in Jacksonville, where his father, Benn, owned Onslow Plumbing Co. A solid worker and builder, the elder Maynard struggled with finances, and young James learned business principles by helping his dad. He calls his father his most important mentor.

After graduation, Maynard served briefly in the U.S. Coast Guard, then entered ECU and worked his way through with full- and part-time jobs. After six years, he earned a degree in psychology.

By then, he was married to the former Connie Mizelle of Plymouth. He had an urgent need to supplement her teaching salary, so he joined Burroughs Corp., selling business machines in Florida. After four years there and a brief period in his own sign business, Maynard and Bill Carl, whom he'd met at Burroughs, decided they'd like to partner in a start-up venture.

Though they had no culinary experience, the franchised food industry appealed to them because it was hot in the early 1970s and didn't require a large investment. Still, between friends and a small bank loan, they could raise only $20,000, not enough to entice chains such as Western Sizzlin' and Pizza Hut.

So Maynard devised a financing scheme for building a restaurant. He created Investors Management Corp. and placed $20,000 in it. Then he located Carolina Wholesale Florists, a small corporation in Sanford that was contemplating liquidation. He invested his company's money in the florist. Afterward, he visited the florist chairman, John McCormick, and company leader Glenn Anderson to strike a deal.

"The deal was for them to give us options to buy control of Carolina Wholesale Florists, and to liquidate all the assets and put it all in the restaurant business," Maynard relates with a head shake.

"It was a real unusual way to get a business financed, and it could have been a disaster," he chuckles. "Knowing what I know today, it would scare me to death."

Maynard and Carl built the first Golden Corral on Bragg Boulevard in Fayetteville. From its opening in January 1973, it was an instant success. Before year end, they followed with two more, one in Raleigh and another in Fayetteville.

When both those lost money, it was a valuable lesson.

"We didn't run the second and third one as well," Maynard said. "We were dividing our attention. As we learned and trained our people how to run them better, finally those two became profitable. But it took until the end of 1975."

After using a contractor on the first Golden Corral, Maynard brought in his father to construct the next 50.

Maynard shunned franchising, preferring to find people who would be 20 percent partners. He eventually gave in to pressure for the operators to own a bigger stake, reluctantly fashioning a franchise formula.

Maynard and Carl, who died several years ago, built 500 Golden Corrals on a 5,000-square-foot design that seated 175. Along the way, they adapted to healthier diets, adding more entrees to what initially was a steak-heavy menu. They also installed extensive salad bars, which cut into seating capacity.

Then in the 1990s, they faced competition from new franchise eateries twice as big, with space for more than 400 diners.

"We couldn't seat the number of people to do the volume you needed to be efficient," Maynard said. So the company started replacing its small restaurants with new ones that featured a 10,000-square-foot floor plan.

"We had over 500 of these small stores," Maynard said. "When we started replacing them, a lot of the towns where we had two small ones only needed one of the big ones."

Today there are 490 Golden Corrals in 42 states. They employ about 32,000 and they turned $1.6 billion in revenue for 2008.

Maynard, 69, remains chairman of Golden Corral Corp., now run by long-time chief executive Ted Fowler. Maynard also is chairman and chief executive of Investors Management Corp. and is laboring to make that holding company into the owner of multiple businesses.

Vowing he'll never retire, Maynard confesses, "I do exactly what I want to do."