On his first day of training, Bob Dorfman was handed a spatula and told to make his way to the grill at a Five Guys restaurant in Virginia. He panicked.
“I was like, ‘Are you joking?’ I never flipped a burger in my life,†he said.
But the trainers breaking in new franchisees weren’t joking, and within minutes, customers were eating burgers made to order by a man who just a few years before was the president of Host International, a billion-dollar company closely associated with hotelier Host Marriott Corp. that employed more than 40,000 people.
Photo: Kathleen Cabble.