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.
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 Chicago; Philadelphia; Lake Geneva,
Wisconsin; Catalina
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 Angeles, California. 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.
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.
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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