Thursday, March 18, 2021

does your chewing gum lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight?

 

In 1959, a British singer named Lonnie Donegan released a silly song titled, “Does your chewing gum lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight”?

does your chewing gum lose itsflavor on the bed post overnight - Bing

I thought of that song this morning after reading about a new restaurant that will soon open in Phoenix.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/dining/2021/03/17/new-restaurant-christophers-wrigley-mansion-phoenix-opening/4705300001/

Here’s the connection:

The restaurant is named “Christopher’s”, and it will be located in the former Wrigley Mansion in Phoenix. Headed by James Beard award-winning chef Christopher Gross, the restaurant will focus on eight-course tasting menus featuring dishes with names like "Spoonful of the Sea," "Foie Gras Candy from the Owner's Hand" and "Umami, Forest and the Ocean," according to a sample menu on the restaurant's website.

https://wrigleymansion.com/christophers/

The eight-course tasting menu will cost $250 per guest with the option to add wine pairings for an additional $230 per person.

Christopher's will be open Tuesday through Saturday from 5-10 p.m. to start with plans to add "Christopher's Classics on Sundays and Mondays, and a lighter tasting menu as our Bistro Lunch, Tuesdays through Saturdays," according to a news release. If you have even a passing familiarity with high end restaurants, you’ll recognize that pricing is similar to that of the “French Laundry” in northern California, where prices for the tasting menu are either $350 per person, or $450 per person – plus ad-ons, which are likely wines and deserts.

https://www.exploretock.com/tfl/

The Wrigley Mansion that the restaurant will be located in was designed by Architect Earl Heitschmidt of Los Angeles and cost $1.2 million (in 1932 dollars) to build. It has 24 rooms, 12 bathrooms, and over 16,000 square feet (1,500 m2). Much of the extensive tilework was shipped to Phoenix from Wrigley's own factory in Catalina, hauled by mule to the site.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrigley_Mansion

The Wrigleys maintained other residences in ChicagoPhiladelphiaLake Geneva, WisconsinCatalina Island; and Pasadena, and used this, the smallest of their houses, for only a few weeks a year. William Wrigley died in 1932, shortly after its completion.

 

 



William Wrigley Jr. made his fortune selling a very inexpensive product – chewing gum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wrigley_Jr.

In 1891, Wrigley moved from Philadelphia to Chicago to go into business for himself. He had $32 to his name ($843 in 2018) and with it he formed a business to sell Wrigley's Scouring Soap. He offered customers small premiums, particularly baking powder, as an incentive to buy his soap. Finding the baking powder was more popular than his soap, Wrigley switched to selling baking powder, and giving his customers two packages of chewing gum for each can of baking powder they purchased. Again, Wrigley found that the premium he offered was more popular than his base product, and his company began to concentrate on the manufacture and sale of chewing gum. In this business, Wrigley made his name and fortune.

Wrigley played an instrumental role in the development of Santa Catalina Island, California, off the shore of Los AngelesCalifornia. He bought a controlling interest in the Santa Catalina Island Company in 1919 and with the company received the island. Wrigley improved the island with public utilities, new steamships, a hotel, the Casino building, and extensive plantings of trees, shrubs, and flowers. He also sought to create an enterprise that would help employ local residents. By making use of clay and minerals found on the island at a beach near Avalon, in 1927 William Wrigley Jr. created the Pebbly Beach quarry and tile plant. Along with creating jobs for Avalon residents, the plant also supplied material for Wrigley's numerous building projects on the island. After the building of Avalon's Casino (see Avalon Theater (Catalina)) in 1929, the Catalina Clay Products Tile and Pottery Plant began producing glazed tiles, dinnerware and other household items such as bookends.

Wrigley’s other interest, of course, was the Chicago Cubs. In 1916, Wrigley bought a minority stake in the Chicago Cubs baseball team as part of a group headed by Charles Weeghman, former owner of the Federal League's Chicago Whales. Over the next four years, as Weeghman's lunch-counter business declined, he was forced to sell much of his stock in the ball club to Wrigley. By 1918, Weeghman had sold all of his stock to Wrigley, making Wrigley the largest shareholder and principal owner, and by 1921, Wrigley was majority owner. Wrigley Field, the Cubs' ballpark in Chicago, is named for him. The now-demolished former home of the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League, at that time the Cubs' top farm team, was also called Wrigley Field. Wrigley purchased the Chicago Cubs from Albert Lasker in 1925.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrigley_Field

Weeghman Field in Chicago was changed to Wrigley Field in 1927, but Wrigley Field in Los Angeles (since demolished) opened in 1925, two years earlier.

l.a. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrigley_Field_(Los_Angeles)

At the time of his death in 1932, at the age of 70, William Wrigley Jr. was worth $34 million. That does not sound like a lot, but if corrected for inflation, that $34 million translate into $625 million in today’s dollars. Not a billionaire, but pretty close.

By comparison, Henry Ford was worth $200 billion at the time of his death in 1947 – in today’s dollars;

Another man who made a very good living selling an inexpensive product was   John Richard Simplot. At the time of his death (at age 99) in 2008, he was worth $3.6 billion. At the time of his death at age 99 in May 2008, he was the oldest billionaire on the Forbes 400

His product?

Potatoes.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._Simplot

The message in the story of William Wrigley is that you don’t have to sell expensive products in order to make a lot of money, and that was a lesson that Ray Kroc learned early on. When the first McDonalds restaurant opened in Des Plaines, Illinois in 1955, hamburgers were 15 cents, cheeseburger were 19 cents, and        sodas were a dime

Ray Kroc was worth more than $3 billion at the time of his death in 1984.

 https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/62573/what-hamburgers-and-milkshakes-cost-mcdonalds-1955

 I have no idea if anybody has ever made a lot of money selling mousetraps, but all of the people listed above understood a simple concept:

Build a better mousetrap (or sell a product that people want) and the world will beat a path to your door.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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