One of these days our students of business will have more of their work published or more available for laymen like me, and when it comes to researching the changing of the guard in owner-managed companies, Chefette Restaurants Ltd may well be a standout case in how to do it really well.
Let me put in my usual disclaimer: Never been anywhere in Chefette besides the restaurant. Just talking out loud. So go ahead and shoot me.
Anyway, we have now had the much-anticipated launch of the new Chefette store at Welches, St Thomas, as part of the mall called The Walk, which adjoins the Cost-U-Less warehouse outlet.
I am not going to focus on that so much today, as by now you would have read about it and maybe seen it for yourself. It is just great, and, as planned, yet another step-up for a company and a family which does not believe in stepping down.
It will rapidly become the anchor restaurant for the area, and help entice people to take a walk at The Walk. Congratulations to all at this 42-year-old Barbadian company, now one of the largest private employers here. It started from scratch in 1972.
What I am more interested in is the amazing way in which the founder, Assad Haloute, has managed his own transition in the company.
He is by no means retired, and we are told he still puts in days that might make a younger man beg for a vacation, but he made sure to send this message loud and clear last Thursday morning: The kids are now in charge.
When the company opened its Black Rock branch a couple of years ago, and when it launched its digital signage just over year ago at its Rockley location, he, if memory serves, played a key role in the speech-making, although his son Ryan Haloute and daughter Janine Haloute-Went were already settled in their positions as managing and deputy managing directors, respectively, and made significant contributions to both events.
Last week, they were the event. In longer and more confident speeches, the managing director and his sister covered with humour and business savvy all the topics needed to fully inform guests and the wider public what the new outlet meant for the company, and Chefette’s continued commitment to maintaining its position as the largest and most successful fast food company in Barbados.
Looking on and beaming was Assad, who said not one word during the event, but of course spoke with everyone before and after the official ceremony, and was clearly referred to as the visionary founder of the business who still played a key role in the decision-making and worked every day.
I thought it was his most gracious performance to date.
As a person from a big family, most of whom are in business, and as a journalist with an interest in how businesses work, I make no apology for being interested in how the Haloute family is making this transition.
Gordon “Butch” Stewart gave me an exclusive interview recently, and as he seemed in the mood to discuss his own journey of facilitating a management transformation at Sandals, I listened with great interest and came away with renewed respect for the great man, as I have for Haloute senior.
In the latter case I can only go on what I see in public and the bits and pieces of what this very private family is willing to divulge.
I don’t need much more, as I am not interested in anything beyond the pale. But I am fascinated in how family-owned enterprises, especially in close families, work out their generational shifts, because when it does not go well, the repercussions are usually not good for the company.
Even in my own limited experience, I have seen the often tragic results when such transitions are botched.
That is why the elder Haloute, one of the most hard-charging, entrepreneurial individuals I have ever met, a man who made his name as one of the toughest competitors you would find in business anywhere, deserves the respect and the gratitude of the country, not only for his lifetime’s work in building Chefette, but for the way he has handled the transition.
He has moulded two outstanding young people in business and, even more significantly, has been able to step back and give them more and more of the reins. I don’t want to have details of how the Haloute or the Stewart families are managing the day-to-day in all this, but I am very grateful to them for the way they have gone about it.
At the end of the day, the grace and humility with which you do something can be more important than what you actually did.
