2013 Business Class Honoree: Hamra Enterprises

When Mike Hamra was in second grade, his father opened Springfield’s first Wendy’s restaurant – the first time a new chain had cracked the local McDonald’s, Burger King, Dairy Queen monopoly. Attorney Sam Hamra sent young Mike to school with free Frosty coupons for his whole class. It made an impression.

“At the time, it was the same thing as social media is today,” says the younger Hamra. “It was about reaching out, building brand awareness, recognizability and engagement. It was about getting people talking, but without the Internet. Starting those conversations is something my dad always did very well.”

In the intervening years, Hamra Enterprises has grown into a multidivision company, operating 77 restaurants and hotels in four states that recorded $160 million in 2012 revenues. That original Wendy’s on Sunshine Street and Campbell Avenue was the beginning of Wendy’s of Missouri Inc., which now manages 28 stores statewide. The company also operates 48 Panera Bread restaurants in Chicago and Boston under the names Chicago Bread Co. and Boston Bread Co. A Holiday Inn Express in Lewisville, Texas, and part ownership of the Springfield’s Baymont Inn round out the company’s 77 total holdings.

Between Boston, Chicago and Missouri, Hamra logs more than 150,000 annual airline miles.

“It’s still about reaching out and building a conversation,” he says. “A lot of our top-down focus is on collaboration and alignment across our divisions, and since each entity and each store has different needs, those conversations all sound a little different.”

Hamra took over as president and CEO in 2011, a markedly down year for the company that. That year, revenue was flat and profits slid 11 percent. But he says the challenge of re-establishing healthy profit growth – nearly 30 percent in 2012 – was a good exercise for him and his team.  

“It made us pay attention to little things that may go unnoticed when business is doing well,” he says. “We found opportunities to do things uniquely and creatively to continue driving top-line growth while ensuring that we were setting ourselves up for sustainability.”

Across it all, though, are three simple tenets passed down from Hamra’s Lebanese-born grandfather – work hard, take care of family and give back to the community. The latter is a cornerstone of Hamra Enterprises, with the respective Boston and Chicago operations each having raised nearly a quarter-million dollars for Boston Children’s Hospital and the Make-A-Wish Foundation in Chicago.

Hamra Enterprises is continuing to take progressive steps as it moves into the next generation of its existence. Besides store renovations including its first Panera drive-thru, the company launched its own share-point intranet site in 2012 – dubbed HamraNet – which facilitates communication between the company’s widespread locations.[[In-content Ad]]