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With little warning, Nancy Parker at the end of 2000 resigned as president of Buffalo, N.Y.-based contract feeder Sportservice. During her three-year term, the Delaware North Cos. division added 19 new contract accounts and nearly doubled annual revenues to $330 million.
Parker, a self-proclaimed "change agent," indicates she was ready to make room for a president whose temperament was more suited to the day-to-day management of a large organization. In stepping down, she became just one of a number of executives or prominent restaurateurs who annually move out of foodservice or at least out of the industry's spotlight.
Those individuals retire or resign to "pursue other interests," either of their own volition or with some nudging by a dissatisfied owner or board or by the fickle dining public. Some just flat out get fired. When they're gone, however, many of those folks cause the people who had known them or followed them from afar to wonder later, "Where are they now?"
In the last few years, several well-known people in foodservice have taken leave of their high-power positions to try their hands at running things in industries as varied as retail, nonprofit and publishing.
Among the departed in recent years was Yum! Brands Inc. president and chief multibranding and operating officer Aylwin B. Lewis, who last fall entered the retail industry by joining Kmart. He was following in the footsteps of other foodservice veterans, including Leonard "Len" Roberts, formerly of the Arby's quick-service and Shoney's family-restaurant organizations, who joined RadioShack in 1993, and Jim Adamson, the former chief executive of Advantica Restaurant Group Inc., now Denny's Corp. Adamson became Kmart chairman and chief executive in 2002 and resigned in 2003.
Also in the group of once-high-profile foodservice personas who have gone on to try their hands in other fields is fine-dining trendsetter Patrick Terrail of the famous but long-shuttered Ma Maison in Los Angeles, who recently turned to newspaper publishing near Atlanta. Like Terrail, Rocco DiSpirito. the former star of reality TV's "The Restaurant" and a onetime New York chef-restaurateur, has a new gig as a talk-show host for New York radio station WOR.
Some foodservice executives eliciting "Where are they now?" inquiries didn't leave the industry but did make major career changes by becoming...