For more than 60 years, the fried chicken and fish found at Harold’s Chicken Shack have been a staple of South Side cuisine. President Obama mentioned the chain on “60 Minutes.” Snoop Dogg and Common have rapped about it, and hip-hop supergroup Slaughterhouse said their lyrics are “greasier than Harold’s chicken.”

Despite being a brand name that verges on the institutional, grease is just about the only thing that binds Chicago’s 38 Harold’s Chicken Shacks together. Thanks to the laissez-faire licensing model adopted by founder Harold Pierce, all but three restaurants are tied to the corporate Harold’s in name, logo and recipe only — leaving those who run the brand with little recourse to force restaurants to modernize or change.

The consequence: an erratic confederation of restaurants. Prices vary by location, as do menus, decor and chicken suppliers.

Hyde Park’s Harold’s, the only franchise to have pizza on the menu.

Now Kristen Pierce, Harold’s CEO and the daughter of the eponymous Harold Pierce, is ushering in a new era. “We’re trying to eliminate the shack,” she says. “I want to set a standard.”

In recent years, Pierce, 43, has stopped issuing licenses for new locations. She’s opened three company-owned restaurants in Bronzeville, Beverly and Momence, with plans to open between six and 10 more in the next year, including one in the Loop. Tanya Winfield, Harold’s COO, estimates each location will cost between $75,000 and $150,000.

The differences between the company-owned Harold’s and many of the licensed locations are stark. The company-owned restaurant in Beverly sits in a new brick development, steps from a Jamba Juice, on a bustling commercial thoroughfare. The walls are bright, the tables sleek black. A whiteboard advertises the store’s Instagram and Twitter accounts. Employees punch orders in on iPads.

Pierce’s position as heir to a fried chicken empire has given her plenty of capital — Harold’s is taking on no debt as she expands. She wants to take the Homewood-based Harold’s national, with locations in airports, stadiums and on college campuses. But if she’s to turn Harold’s into the fast-food empire she envisions, experts say she’ll need to wrangle the 35 licensed Harold’s that dot Chicago, some of which gross more than $1 million in annual sales.

“I’ve seen brands have trouble growing and succeeding, frankly, because you’ve got too many of these rogue locations,” says Amy Cheng, partner at Cheng Cohen, a law firm specializing in franchising and distribution. “If I’m the customer, I go to one location and I get horrible service or horrible food, I’m not going to that brand again.”

The variations even unsettle some of the licensees. Mande Ashkar, whose family owns a Harold’s in the South Loop, travels to different locations to see how his counterparts run their restaurants. “I just went to one Harold’s and the food was excellent and the place was welcoming and then I walk into [another] place and it’s like, what the heck happened?” he says. “It’s like I walked into two different companies.”

A portrait of founder Harold Pierce hanging in the restaurant’s headquarters.

The licensing model that got Harold’s into this predicament is nearly as old as the restaurant. After moving from his native Alabama, Harold Pierce opened his first restaurant in Kenwood in 1950. Early on, he developed a simple method that allowed Harold’s Chicken Shacks to proliferate across the South Side. After personally training family members and friends in his own stores, Pierce sent them off on their own. New owners were required to purchase chickens from a single supplier (a friend of his); the restaurants paid Harold a royalty of 42 cents for each chicken they sold. “My dad would show you how to operate it,” Pierce says. “Then he would step out of it.”

After Harold passed away in 1988, the chicken kingdom changed hands — first to his second wife Willa, who died in 2003, then his son, J.R. Kristen says J.R. tried to work closely with licensees. “My brother, he was trying to make it consistent, trying to make sure no one was cutting corners.”

J.R. worked to strengthen the relationship between corporate Harold’s and the restaurants by doing surprise inspections and slapping fines on locations that weren’t abiding by their licensing agreements. He began taking a 6 percent cut of total sales — in addition to chicken royalties — for some licenses.

Then, when J.R. died unexpectedly due to complications from a surgery in 2008, Kristen Pierce stepped in. Her approach with the licensees is more collaborative. “I guess now you could say we’re hand-holding,” Pierce says.

In many ways, Pierce’s challenge is to put the genie back in the bottle. After decades of varying management practices, she’s faced with licenses that vary in time frame (some are as long as 20 years) and key terms. Across the board, the owners have total control over their menu, décor and suppliers. One Hyde Park location sells pizza. As long as the licensees comply with their contract terms, Pierce doesn’t have a lot of leverage.

“There are legal reasons why licenses can be revoked,” Winfield, the CFO, says. “But for the most part, it’s based on the expiration date.”

Pierce sees the new corporate stores as a vision of what older restaurants could be — the latter of which are concentrated primarily in a corridor that stretches from Englewood and Woodlawn down south through Markham and Homewood. But she recognizes that for a lot of licensees, incentives to make drastic changes may not exist. “It’s kind of hard to change when you’ve been operating a certain way for so long,” Pierce says.

Winfield and Pierce haven’t yet determined how they’ll persuade reluctant owners to come along for the ride, but they do believe in the power of example. “Some people are motivated by seeing the new stores,” Winfield says. “And the ones that don’t — we’ll sit down and have a conversation with them. We definitely can’t force anyone to do anything.”

Cheng says that companies that haven’t reserved the authority to regulate restaurants can face a dilemma down the line. “They get into a real pickle when 10 years later they’ve got all these different, really old, outdated stores that they can’t require the licensee or franchisee to spend money to upgrade,” Cheng says.

But while a dependable consumer experience is one of the hallowed tenets of expansion, some say consistency is overrated. Bruce Kraig, culinary historian and author of “Man Bites Dog: Hot Dog Culture in America,” says that Harold’s success is due in large part to its homespun charm — the replica of Harold’s old delivery Cadillac, which had an enormous papier mâché chicken head mounted on its roof, the handwritten signs and the fraying wallpaper. Without it, Kraig wonders if Harold’s risks losing its strongest value proposition — its authenticity. “I’d make them nice and clean, of course, but I wouldn’t make them too slick,” Kraig says. “If they’re going to make it uniform, then what’s the difference between Harold’s and Church’s?”

Providing a reliable experience that doesn’t feel antiseptic requires nimble management and deft branding. Kraig says Portillo’s would serve as the ideal model for Harold’s as it grows — locations are consistent in pricing and fare, but no two stores look the same in décor or exterior. “With new chains, I know what I’m getting and I think it’s good, but they’re kind of soulless,” he says. “I think looking different would be a marketing advantage. Even if they’re all company-owned.”

The brass at Harold’s is confident that their reputation and history will travel well. “We want people to know who Mr. Pierce was,” Winfield says. “We want his vision to resonate across the country. He’s our Colonel Sanders.”

For more on how Chicago eats, check out our index.
Photos by Sara Mays

He’s spent weeks trying to fill four jobs at the Schaumburg facility, where 24 employees aren’t enough to meet increased demand for metal floats (think the round floats in toilets that monitor water levels) and float assemblies.

“We can’t keep up,” he said, pausing near a worker maneuvering a machine melting metal squares into bowl shapes. “It’s an interesting challenge.”

Speer’s company isn’t alone. The Alliance for Illinois Manufacturing estimates 30,000 to 50,000 Chicago-area manufacturing jobs are unfilled. And that number could get higher: Manufacturing jobs in the Chicago region are multiplying quicker than elsewhere in the country — increasing 5 percent the past two years, according to a study released by the UIC Center for Urban Economic Development in February.

Small manufacturers like Quality Float Works are seeing a renewed interest in sourcing parts and labor locally. Speer said the company tried purchasing parts in China for about 60 percent cheaper in 2009. But he estimated 80 percent of the parts they received were defective. The company then returned its business to Chicago suppliers.

Manufacturing’s potential for job creation is strong. In the Chicago region, each manufacturing job supports 2.2 additional jobs, according to a May UIC study. But despite above-average earnings (workers at metropolitan Chicago manufacturing jobs made an average of $67,168 in 2011, according to the February study), as well as opportunity for on-the-job training and, in many instances, minimal experience or qualifications required, manufacturing jobs in Chicago are difficult for companies to fill.

Part of that is the sector’s inability to shake off an outdated reputation, said Manny Rodriguez, vice president for business and economic development for the Alliance for Illinois Manufacturing.

“It’s just not the type of manufacturing that your father or grandfather [worked] in,” he said. “The perception is you’re going to be hard labor, eight to 10 hours a day. It’s just not like that anymore. So much of it is controlled by computers.”

And there’s major opportunity for growth. Quality Float Works’ foreman, not long ago, was a Bartlett High School student who had little experience.

“A lot of what we do is specialized,” Speer said. “We can bring someone in and they can have zero experience, but if they really have a drive, we train them. We can start you on the ground level.”

The challenge, the Alliance’s CEO Pam McDonough said, is changing the way young adults — and their parents — think about a future in manufacturing.

“People don’t think it’s a viable option for a career,” she said. “Somebody that just has a GED or a high school diploma can start off as an entry-level machinist and within five or six years be making near $100,000 a year.”

With degree-requiring jobs hard to come by for millennials, McDonough said manufacturing positions should be considered before earning an expensive degree. She said schools need to get guidance counselors, teachers and parents to remind students that college may not be for everyone.

“[They’re] thinking college only,” she said. “People have this fallacy in their head that if you get a college degree, you’re going to make $100,000. That’s just not the way it is.”

And the best part of a manufacturing job?

“You don’t take it home with you,” McDonough said.

Photo of Jason Speer by Sara Mays

]]> http://www.chicagogrid.com/careers/hottest-job-sectors-chicago-doesnt-require-college-degree/feed/ 0 http://www.chicagogrid.com/distractions/second-city-chicago-building/ http://www.chicagogrid.com/distractions/second-city-chicago-building/#comments Wed, 19 Jun 2013 05:00:11 +0000 Grid Staff http://www.chicagogrid.com/?p=7129 Continue reading →]]> Second City moved into Piper’s Alley in 1967. Since then, the comedy company has taken up more and more space — 48,000 square feet today — in the Old Town facility. Now, hundreds of employees work in the theaters, training facility and corporate offices. Tom Yorton, CEO of The Second City Communications, says the office reflects the comedy craft. “A fundamental tenet of improvisation is this idea of ‘Yes, and … ’ which is about affirming and building on ideas,” Yorton says. “It’s how we create sketches and entire shows. Something is there and we add to it and build upon it. I actually think that’s also true about the space. We’ve ‘Yes, and-ed’ our way into all these nooks and crannies.” Take a tour through their unconventional space in the slideshow below.

“Drop him early,” he says. “Put him on his back.”

The South Side native hasn’t shied away from many fights, including the one that led from the knockabout lean hog pit, where he began his career as a runner in 1980, to the chairmanship of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange 22 years later.

Under Duffy, 54, the CME went public and bought its crosstown rival, the Chicago Board of Trade. Duffy has also overseen an upheaval in trading, as the raucous open-outcry style that dominated the Chicago pits has steadily given way to algorithm-driven computer trading.

Through it all, the CME Group remains a force. Its market cap is more than $20 billion, and 95 percent of of U.S. futures contracts trade on its markets.

Grid: In the shift from open outcry to electronic trading, did you ever think about those who got left behind? You started with a lot of guys who aren’t there anymore.

TD: No I don’t think anybody got left behind. Everybody gave them the opportunity to come along, the question was, did you want to come along or did you want to stay with something when you could see the writing on the wall? That way of life was going to go away, when you looked all throughout Europe or Asia, nobody’s opening a trading floor for traders to trade on, they’re opening up electronic exchanges.

[Customers] don’t want to be reliant upon an old way of doing this, and so if traders didn’t recognize that, there’s really not anything you’re ever going to be able to do. How do you make them see it?

Grid: You were 21 when you started here as a runner, and you worked your way up from the pits to the head of the boardroom table. Now to get started in the exchange you typically need to be highly trained in math or programming or finance. Has the city’s middle class lost a path to prosperity?

TD: It [still exists], it just doesn’t exist in the same way. [Back then] you could come down here, you could know a cousin or a neighbor or somebody who was a clerk or a runner or a trader, it seemed like everybody knew somebody, and you had such a flow of people that could come in here at the bottom level as runners in the business and see if they liked it or not.

It’s different today. But you [still] never know who’s gonna be your next superstar. I know a lot of Ivy League guys that I’m surprised they could find the building, I know a lot of guys who were not Ivy League guys who did very well because they had a good practical sense about them.

Grid: With the necessary prerequisites of today, does that mean the Terry Duffy of 1980 wouldn’t succeed at the CME?

TD: My story couldn’t happen today. It doesn’t exist anymore. My story can happen in a different way, but it can’t happen in the way I did it.

Grid: Does that trouble you?

TD: I think there’s nothing wrong with that, I actually think it’s good.
You take your history and you apply it to your future. I do that in everything I do here, every decision I make in the company. I take my history and what I’ve learned and I try to apply it going forward.

Grid: In 2011, you threatened to move CME out of Illinois. Were you serious?
TD: I was dead serious.

Grid: So that means CME is capable of picking up and leaving.

TD: If you’re going to get so brutally treated as far as your tax treatment. And people keep saying CME got a tax break, CME did not get a tax break.

CME is the 16th highest taxpayer in the state of Illinois today!

Grid: So what’s keeping you here?

TD: We have people coming from different countries to move to Chicago because they want to be close to this business. We’ve invested in that, and any time you walk away from that you have to start from scratch again. So even though I could pick up the exchange tomorrow and move to New York or some other location, I can’t do that overnight either.

Grid: Would it have broken your heart to pull up stakes?

TD: Absolutely, I would have done it, but it would have broken my heart. Yes.

Grid: Where would you have gone?

TD: I’m not gonna tell you where we would have gone. I can tell you we own an exchange in New York, so that was appealing. A lot of our client base comes from New York, too.

Grid: Texas Gov. Rick Perry has been in town recently, trying to recruit Chicago companies to Texas. Did he call on you back in 2011?

TD: Gov. Perry made a visit. So have a lot of other governors.

Grid: Gov. Perry says he’s fine with companies using his state’s offers as leverage to get tax breaks in Illinois. Isn’t that just a race to the bottom?

TD: If you’re asking for [a handout], I would agree. If you’re looking to negotiate something that makes sense for both the municipality, the state and the corporation, that’s different, and that’s what I was looking to do.

Yes, you can have a race to the bottom. There’s no question about it. That’s not the situation that the CME was in.

I think the state of Illinois is one of the greatest states in the union, and we could be so much better. We have the best location in America, we have so many great different logistical things that are put in place between the lakes and the airports and the rail system. This state should be flourishing.

Grid: Last month, during his speech at the Economic Club, Citadel CEO Ken Griffin made some pointed comments about Illinois companies who take tax breaks to stay here. He said those firms had been “bought off” by state politicians. CME was on the list of companies projected behind him. What went through your head when you heard about that?

TD: Didn’t upset me. I thought it was bush league. I thought it was bush league cause it was somebody trying to make a speech about something they don’t understand, and I’ll tell him that to his face. ’Cause if he understood what I did [in 2011], I didn’t go to the state for a tax break, and that’s the way he portrayed it in his speech. I’ll call him and tell him that.

Photo by Mike Schwartz

Students at The Designation pay $3,000 to attend three-hour classes twice a week for nine weeks to learn the philosophy and fundamentals of Web and graphic design, including HTML and CSS, wireframing and design theory. Kevin Yun teaches development, veteran GrubHub designer Zeke Franco covers user experience design, and Reppio creative director JJ Lee handles branding and Adobe training.

The Designation’s first — and so far only — session, now underway, was a profitable one, says founder Yun. Thirteen students’ tuition covers rent at Loop digital agency Manifest Digital, where classes are held, as well as instructor compensation, setup and marketing costs.

Yun is a self-taught designer and senior at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he’s somewhat reluctantly studying finance. For Yun, running The Designation is more than a summer job. He describes his commitment as “full time at night” as he juggles designing for two other startups, including Fitsby, an exercise app.

Yun sees The Designation’s curriculum as superior training for career-changers or recent graduates. “There’s nobody else really teaching digital design classes in Chicago at the moment,” he says.

But there is some overlap with other crash courses, and more programs are getting in position to meet growing digital demand. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts employment of graphic designers will increase 13 percent by 2020. Designers with website design and interactive media experience will be in the best shape to compete for jobs.

Manifest Digital, where The Designation meets, has scheduled its first 10-week UX class to begin in July. President Jim Jacoby says Manifest’s program complements The Designation’s, with the former focusing more heavily on user interaction design. “The result is a different kind of skill set, but both are valuable depending on the employer,” Jacoby says.

The Starter League, formerly known as Code Academy, is the 2-year-old grandfather of intensive programs for technical skills in Chicago. Starter League started out in 2011 turning people into coders in 11 weeks, and has since added UX design and visual design to its course catalog. CEO Neal Sales-Griffin isn’t worried about similar offerings from schools like The Designation.

“I’m excited about all the programs that exist because, really, it’s going to make sure that we know what our work is and that people are choosing us not because we’re the only version of what we do but we’re the best,” Sales-Griffin says.

Not that Yun sees Chicago’s original get-tech-quick school as competition.

“When it comes down to design classes, we’re jam-packing everything design-related into one course … as opposed to one specialized class that meets once a week,” he says.

The Designation’s course runs in high gear, shoving in so much that missing even a single night could result in failure. That sort of compression is unpalatable to those who believe design education is more than placing elements on a screen.

“There’s a parallel between learning to code really fast and learning to design really fast,” says Janell Baxter, associate director of the interactive arts and media department at Columbia College. “You can only get so far with that.”

The professor questions Yun’s lack of attention to topics such as psychology and human behavior, which she says are essential to creating great design. But at more than $22,000 a year, an education at Columbia may too expensive for those looking simply to learn design skills. For such people, The Designation may offer an alternative.

“Compared to getting a graduate degree in design, it’s really manageable,” says Laura Grey Humphrey, a former packaging engineer who quit her job to work part time and focus on coursework at The Designation.

At 24, Humphrey represents Yun’s sweet spot — young professionals who want to switch careers or expand their skills at work. She is among those keen to join a startup. Other students, Yun says, want to revamp company websites or transition from the print world to digital.

Yun says he’s been asked to schedule more sessions, and how he meets that demand may determine The Designation’s future success. Though he has no interest in earning accreditation for the school, he’s betting the portfolios students build will be worth as much as any degree.

With the fall semester looming, Yun must assess that value for himself too. As of now, he hasn’t decided whether he will return to campus.

Photo of Kevin Yun by Sara Mays

5% The increase in fine-dining visits nationally in the first quarter of 2013 versus the last quarter of 2012. The average check size also increased 2%. [The NPD Group]

1934 The year of the oldest bottle of wine, the Chateau d’Yquem, at Tru, a restaurant in River East.

16,000 Approximate number of licensed food vendors in Chicago. [City of Chicago]

x 1,129  The number of whole chickens that Parson’s Chicken and Fish, in Logan Square, serves on its busiest nights.

312,721 The number of steaks sold at Gibsons in 2012.  It’s all fun and games till your next cardiologist appointment..

25 The number of dishes used to plate the 18 courses on the Flora and Fauna tasting menus at Grace, in the West Loop.

$61,000 The average salary for an executive chef in Chicago. Corporate executive chefs make $91,000. [indeed.com].

3,000 tortillas are made every day at Rick Bayless‘ restaurants. Their weekly frozen tomato shipment weighs 600 lbs.

125 The approximate number of menu items Elizabeth has produced since opening in September.

38 The age of the oldest whiskey at Logan Square’s Longman and Eagle.

100,315 The number of oysters sold at Hugo’s Frog Bar in 2012.