buyers to place orders for what they wanted. So, I began to work my heart out. To intro- duce the product, I drove to New York what seemed like a thousand times and called on every hotel kitchen in Manhattan, talked to every chef, and met with every Food and Beverage Manager I could find. For a while it worked. I placed the product and once I had a small set of repeat customers, I tried to lever- age the sales by making other products they would consider. That is when I introduced the chicken kabob. Unlike seafood, chicken had to be feder- ally inspected and labeled. So, I had to find a different manufacturing plant. I found one about a hundred miles north in Pennsylvania. With two products under my belt, I began to work on a third, a line of hors-d’oeuvres. The company was doing business, but I was working like a slave. No matter how hard I worked, I began to notice I was up against a wall. I was selling specialty products. Restau- rants only used them as a special once in a while. Repeat orders were delayed. Deter- mined, I hung on and sustained my small public enterprise, while not building up any debt, all along puzzling over how to make it a success. 1972-1974 UNITED COFFEE Months went by, then a year or two. All the while our cash dwindled without finding a good acquisition. Finally, we purchased a large coffee service. I was able to build it from 1,500 to 5,000 clients in a period of two years. The idea was to place coffee machines in
offices and sell the coffee and supplies to use with them. Every time we added a customer, we had to invest in one more coffee machine. This equipment could easily grow legs and disappear, and nothing was keeping our clients from buying products to use from other sources. It seemed nothing would go right with the new company. It was during the early days of computerized billing, and the firm handling the billing got our accounts mixed up, caus- ing a nightmare of errors. Earnings had all but disappeared. The underwriter started to squeeze us, too, and the investors were leaning on Hank, to do something. Unfortunately for me ‘doing something,’ meant changing management. The directors met without me and decided I was out. The next day Hank broke the news to me in a devastating blow. Until then, I thought Hank and I were a team. I thought we could face any eventuality, but I was naive. Except for a short conversation we had on the tele- phone many years later, that was the last time we spoke to each other. The new management was never able to do better with the company. It just dragged on and on until it eventually ended. UNEMPLOYED I had a wife and four children to support. At least, I still had a little income from the 7-Elev- ens, but it was not enough to sustain even our modest lifestyle. I was at the bottom of a very tall mountain I knew I had to climb. The story of that climb is itself the stuff of another tale. For the first time in my life, I applied for unemployment benefits. It was embarrassing to go from being a CEO to the unemployment line. My son Michael stood with me in line. It left an indelible impression on him to one day succeed in business. I put my pride aside
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Candid photo of Herman
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