Meet the Big Macs of the Valley's McDonald's

EDITOR'S NOTE: Face Time is a new feature profiling local business people in a first-person format.

Jan: I grew up in Plain City, Ohio. I graduated from Ohio State University in marketing. I grew up in a very rural community, population 72, 30 miles outside Columbus. When I was 17, I was cooking hamburgers. I ran a 10-stool diner for the summer to help put my way through school.

Greg: I also grew up in Ohio, in a town called Bellefontaine, a town of about 15,000 people. I went to school at Ohio State University, where Jan and I met. Back in those days, the draft was still going pretty hot and heavy so I was in Navy ROTC. I thought if I was going to have to serve, I'd get better experience going in with the officer training and the professional background that provided.

Jan: We've been married 41 years. He graduated from college on a Tuesday, he was commissioned as an officer on Friday and we were married on Saturday. And we left Ohio Sunday.

We lived in Athens, Ga., we lived in New London, Conn., we lived back in Charleston, S.C., back in New London, Conn., and we lived in Virginia Beach, Va. I led my company in real estate sales for seven years while we were there. I taught school in all these different places and I also worked for the University of Georgia. So, I had different careers.

Greg: After I'd spent six months in supply core service, I was really fortunate and got selected to go to submarine school. All but one of my tours in the 13 years was associated with the submarine force.

I wanted to get out when I was still young enough and had the energy to start another business. We focused on franchising, I guess, for a couple of reasons. One, we had saved some money by investing in real estate when she was selling real estate. And then, my dad was a Culligan water conditioning franchisee in Bellefontaine, Ohio, and so I had learned from him.

Jan: He was looking into Wendy's and Gregg's, Judy's and all kinds of things and I kept seeing these ads. and at that time McDonald's was far and above the rest. And we came over to look at the McDonald's here (in Yakima) and (McDonald's) had an ad on TV at that time where this young man is standing and he's waiting for his little girl to jump into the pool, and he says, 'If you jump into the pool, I'll take you to McDonald's.'

This was one of the places we were offered. And I was down by the pool and it was the weekend we were visiting ... and the guy copied the ad right in front of me. He said, if you jump into the pool, he says to his little 2 year-old, I'll take you to McDonald's. This was at the motel we were staying at and I bolted up to the room. I ran up to the room and I said (to Greg), 'That's a sign. This is it.'

So for me, it was like a magical moment. This is it. This is Yakima. It's the place. It's the right franchise.

Greg: One of the reasons we chose Yakima was because it had four seasons, it was an agriculture-based community, much like the communities we grew up in. So, we really preferred that compared to a big city. We loved the Northwest and we'd made a decision to stay in the Northwest, not only because we liked it but because we loved the people. So, it's home for us. Our kids were raised here.

Greg: I would say both of us had parents that were active in their communities and involved in trying to make a difference. So, with the McDonald's thing, by virtue of owning the McDonald's, you're already pretty visible. It's hard not to be on everybody's radar screen. It just seemed a natural thing that fit with our business, fit with our background, fit with our belief system, to try to make it a better place. And, it's good business.

Jan: We have always worked well with the schools and the churches and just have always loved doing the tie-ins. It enriches our lives every day -- to see people succeed that we're able to groom here and see them out in public. It's an amazing reward that's pretty quiet that nobody talks about. We get that advantage and beauty every day.

The person that runs our company. She's been with us since she was 17. She's actually been with McDonald's longer than we have. She was a crew person when we bought the stores. She's our director of operations. She's been with us 28 years and the second in command has also. There's a real beauty in that family. McDonald's is a family.

Greg: As we continued to grow, reluctantly, you get further and further removed from the restaurant. We didn't hire a supervisor to actually help us do our job until we had four stores. And that's when I started hiring staff to help us. When we started, we were cooking cheeseburgers. We were doing payroll on our living room floor. We were fixing stuff. You, really, truly had to be a jack of all trades.

As we've grown, I've had to delegate and delegate and hire more staff to do these things.

Jan: Every day looks different. You're not going in at a time and coming home at a time. You're troubleshooting. You're fixing problems. You're counseling people who are unhappy. You're talking to a wounded mother. You're talking to a crew person who lost their girlfriend.

Every day brings a new challenge. You're never bored. Because you don't know what that day is going to bring. You might have a day, where, you know, there's no hot button. Other days you might have six hot buttons. Who knows?

-- As told to Scott Mayes, assistant city editor

Greg and Jan Luring

AGES: Greg, 64; Jan, 63

BUSINESS VENTURE: They own 11 McDonald's restaurants, 10 in Yakima County and one in Kittitas County

FAMILY: Two daughters, Kimberly, 38; Megan, 29

BEST ADVICE YOU'VE EVER RECEIVED: Greg -- "A friend told me to listen. Ask a lot of questions, be curious, investigate." Jan -- "My grandfather and mother told me, if you treat people the way you want to be treated, you will find a measure of peace and success."

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