Page 248 - Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company

Dream, Believe, Dare, Do 229

needed about 90. I couldn’t find any more people who were willing to quit
their jobs over the holiday to come and work for this unknown company.
Once we opened and people saw how popular we were, we said ‘Whew!’
and were able to hire more servers. I still think those 33 servers are the best
servers I’ve ever seen in our company,” said Peter D’Amelio, now president
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of restaurant operations.
By day three, the word was out. East Coast residents are very “cheesecake
savvy,” but now a new West Coast cheesecake had arrived and was out to
de-throne New York’s favorite. By the end of the night, there were only a
few pieces left, and the closest supply of this fabulous new cheesecake was
3,000 miles away. As Max Byfuglin, president of The Cheesecake Factory
Bakery told us, “We got the call that said, ‘We are out of almost everything.
We don’t even have any more of the Original (Evelyn’s original cheesecake
recipe).’” Normally, a truck would deliver the cheesecakes directly from the
bakery in California to the display cases in D.C., but faster delivery was
needed. “We figured out that we could get eight cakes packed in specially
designed boxes with Styrofoam into one Federal Express box with dry ice.
That day we sent over 100 boxes via Federal Express to D.C. The cost was
about $150 a box to ship them, but we could not not have cheesecakes!” Max
exclaimed.
The craving for cheesecake was contagious in D.C. and has continuously
brought waves of locals and tourists to the growing list of Cheesecake Factory
locations from coast to coast. And with the success of the D.C. location, the
company went public in 1992: an unbelievable feat for a restaurant chain
with no more than a handful of locations.
Despite its unparalleled success, many food critics have expressed their
displeasure with the whole “Cheesecake” phenomenon. They have little
regard for David’s innovative bent for producing untried and eclectic cui-
sine. But then again, he was never one to buckle under pressure or criticism.
When CNN and USA Today provided a forum for critics who announced
the fat and calorie content of certain Cheesecake Factory items, retired vice
president, Linda Candioty, called and told them, “We want our customers to
get every calorie they are paying for.” After that, according to Max Byfuglin,
“Sales went up.”
The fact that the menu has evolved from a simple two-sided piece into
a 200-menu-item book may be attributed to David’s great passion for the
exploration of food and finding new things that people just can’t seem to get
enough of. Fortunately, at Cheesecake Factory, they can’t really complain