Book excerpt: Winning the Chain Restaurant Game Are you ready for success?... Find out what it takes in this insider's guide to making it intoday's most exciting growth industry. In this instructive and inspiring book, award-winning authorsand foodservice industry experts Charles Bernstein and Ron Paultell how the most successful restaurant companies win withbottom-up management, putting the customer on top. Based oninterviews with more than a hundred industry executives and packedwith enlightening examples as well as a few historic failures, thisunique book teaches important lessons for restaurateurs and otherentrepreneurs: * Presents the first authoritative, in-depth look at therestaurant chain industry as a whole * Tells how successful chain CEOs produce results with variedwinning styles * Isolates and clearly describes the eight crucial factors, orstrategic "links," vital to restaurant chain success * Tells how chains can capitalize on bulk purchasing, brandidentity, consistent execution, an individual sense of styleand--most of all--finding unique ways to please thecustomer Few success stories so thoroughly embody the twentieth-centuryAmerican dream as those of restaurant chains such as McDonald's,KFC, Pizza Hut, Wendy's, Little Caesar's, and Taco Bell. Butbesides the "true grit" demonstrated by entrepreneurial heros likeMcDonald's Ray Kroc and Wendy's Dave Thomas, what does it take tobuild and maintain a successful restaurant or retail chain? Findout in this first book to give a broad, long-term perspective onone of the nation's leading growth industries and to offer cruciallessons for all entrepreneurs, no matter what the business. Winning the Chain Restaurant Game, by award-winning authors andnoted foodservice industry experts Charles Bernstein and Ron Paul,documents the critical success factors required for one of thetoughest, most competitive industries. Highlighting the winning styles of more than a hundred chainexecutives, their triumphs, trials, disappointments, andturnarounds, this fascinating and instructive book identifies theeight strategic "links" that lead to victory in the chainrestaurant business. With surgical precision, Bernstein and Paulexplore such key factors as leadership, motivation, bulkpurchasing, marketing, identity, consistency, and expansion. Butthey place focus ahead of everything and conclude that theentrepreneurial passion of an executive who deeply believes in hisconcept is the ultimate catalyst for success. Small- to medium-size chains are going public at a dizzying paceand there are enormous financial opportunities for savvy restaurantowners. Winning the Chain Restaurant Game arms operators with thevital know-how needed to win the game.