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By Bob Gary, Jr., Staff Writer / Chattanooga Times Free Press
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| Jack Steiner, Jr. '90
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After 27 years, Jack Steiner, Jr. is right where he never thought he’d be. He went to work when he was 12 at Ruby Falls. His family has long owned at least part of the Lookout Mountain attraction. “I put bumper stickers on cars,” he said. “I made $1.80 an hour.”
Family business or not, he said, the idea that he would make Ruby Falls his career was “never on my radar.” He became a restaurateur right after college (ETSU Class of 1990), but went to work for his father three years later and, in September 2004, succeeded him as Ruby Falls’ President.
“We’re going to focus very hard on training,” the younger Mr. Steiner said. “Not just job training, but customer-service training. We also have a plan in place to restore the property and bring the building back to what it was like in the 1930s. My charge is to continue to put money back into the business, keep the customer No. 1, and elevating performance.”
Mr. Steiner said his plan was to “do his own thing” and steer his career clear of the family business. He bought Ricky’s, a Fourth Avenue restaurant, and ran it for three years. “I’d been running the restaurant fairly successfully, and I was happy,” he said. “It was a lot of work, but it was fun.”
Then his father called.
“He was so successful that he grew to the point of needing more management help,” Steiner said. “There was definitely a thought process, but it was an opportunity to do something else, and it was out of loyalty.
“I went from a five-day-a-week job to a seven-day-a-week job.” He started with managing Ruby Falls’ food and beverage operation, then brought the gift concession in house a year later. “The first year, we got the (food and beverage) costs in line. The next year, we did the gifts and more than doubled (that income) in one year. It’s about merchandising, retail setup and product mix. You can’t just put the product out there,” he said.
Mr. Steiner, who became general manager four years ago, said it’s been “neat” to watch his family’s business change and grow over the years. He said Ruby Falls’ average annual sales now exceed $5 million.
“For about 12 years, we only had 10 full-time employees. Now we’ve got 30. We’re able to feed 30 families, and we’ve got 100 people on the payroll,” counting part-time workers.
(John T. “Jack” Steiner, Jr. is a 1990 ETSU Alumnus with BBA degree in Business Management) |
