Articles
May 27, 2025
Ted Fowler’s career garners Legends Award
Renowned restaurateur honored for lifetime of service.
Association President & CEO Michelle Korsmo, left, and Golden Corral President & CEO Lance Trenary, right, honor Ted Fowler at the Legends Award celebration.
Midway through the career that earned him this year’s prestigious Legends Award from the National Restaurant Association, Ted Fowler remarked to a gathering of fellow industry leaders that he felt like the turtle who finds itself perched atop a fence post.
“I don’t know how I got here,” the then-CEO of Golden Corral told fellow directors of the Association back in the 1990s, “but I know I had help.”
Anyone familiar with Fowler’s five decades in the business can attest that the long-time restaurateur hoisted many a turtle himself during that stretch. Most of his career was spent at Golden Corral, where his influence is still evident.
Fowler was only the second individual in the chain’s 52-year history to serve as CEO. He spent years mentoring his successor, Lance Trenary, who took the CEO position in 2015. Trenary is no slouch himself; he won an IFMA Gold Plate award in 2022.
“I finally told him, ‘There’s nothing more I can teach you,’” recalls Fowler, who won his own Gold Plate in 2003. “‘You have my number.’”
“That was the way Ted ran the company,” says James Maynard, Golden Corral’s co-founder and first CEO. “He allowed people to be the best they could be. If he was working with someone, he wanted them to be successful. He really cared about the people, and they knew it.”
Fowler pushed hard to keep the business growing and succeeding, but that drive was tempered by a sense of humor that left many chuckling. “I sincerely believe he could have been a standup comic,” says Maynard. “He made it fun for all of us.”
The quips became known within the chain as Fowlerisms and would be a solid foundation for any stage act. Take for example his caution against complacency in keeping a brand out in front: “Today’s peacock is tomorrow’s feather duster.”
The corporate staff once even gathered the most memorable of those lines into a book, Trenary recalls.
The humor softened what even Fowler himself characterizes as impatience. “I like to get things done quickly,” he deadpans.
His Fowlerism for that go-go mindset: “The heck with the horse. Load up the wagon.”
“I was making $2.50 an hour,” he recalls. The pay was enough to cover what the young Fowler saw at the time as life’s essential C’s: clothes, a car, Coors, and chicks.
He also loved the work, which he found to be outright fun. So, he had to make a choice.
"I thought, if I go into the vet business, I’ll bury my mistakes,” he recalls. “If I go into the restaurant business, I can eat my mistakes. And I make a lot of mistakes.”
After graduation, he ended up as a partner in a Dallas restaurant.
One of his managers there was hired away by a North Carolina upstart called Golden Corral, a pioneer of what would come to be known as the budget-steak segment. Golden Corral was all about value. It offered a steak dinner (but little else than steak) for under $2, and it was a hit.
When chain co-founder/owners Maynard and Bill Carl parlayed the business into a 16-unit chain in the Southeast, they needed a deeper infrastructure. In particular, they needed someone with operational savvy and financial discipline to oversee multiple units.
Their hire had spoken glowingly to the pair about his former boss, simultaneously telling Fowler about all the potential he saw at Golden Corral. Carl met with Fowler and liked what he found.
“Ted really measured up,” Maynard says. “He had all the attributes we were looking for. More importantly, he had the integrity, forthrightness, and aptitude to be a good leader.”
They hired Fowler, who had a clear knack for operations, which propelled him up the ladder. He became District Manager, then General Manager of Operations and, by the mid-1980s, President. He would add the CEO title when Maynard transitioned to Chairman and split his time between Golden Corral and its parent company, Investors Management Corp.
By the time Trenary joined the chain in 1986, “Ted was already a legend the current CEO says. “James had the vision. Ted built the foundation of the company. We then hammered out a lot of brand standards so we could stay on the right path as we expanded.”
“Just watching him was phenomenal,” Maynard says. “He’s such a hard charger, an iron fist in a velvet glove.”
“He had a grit that was unlike anything I’d ever seen,” adds Trenary, plus a “tenacity and over-the-top commitment to execution.”
The brand’s high sales volumes and profitability brought competition, particularly from a then-new challenger called Ryan’s. Their menu was much wider than Golden Corral’s, and its salad bar was a veritable buffet. The older chain saw its customers switching allegiance.
“We had 500 smaller stores,” Fowler says. “I told someone at the time, we’re making slide rules, and the pocket calculator is out there.”
“Competitors were beating our brains out,” remarks Maynard.
Fowler sums up his approach to competition as punching back twice as hard. If challengers were getting traction with bigger stores offering a wider array of choices, the best response was to out-do them at their own game.
The solution Fowler envisioned was opening big-box restaurants known inhouse as “metro stores,” a reference to their need for a larger market than the smallish trade areas Golden Corral had deliberately chosen for its small stores.
The metros featured a food bar that was a true buffet, with enough options for every member of the family. Each metro unit, for instance, sported a bakery and extensive dessert array.
The venture took off, in part through franchising, another endeavor Fowler championed.
“Greatness was thrust upon us,” quips Maynard.
ProStart provides an alternate career path for high-school students who aren’t interested in traditional forms of higher education. It fits Fowler’s philosophy that the restaurant industry is a great place to work “for a year or a career.”
Fowler was serving as Chairman of the National Restaurant Association when the 9/11 terrorist attacks put the economy on hold. The restaurant business was one of the industries that suffered the most, a victim of the public’s fear that more turmoil and attacks were ahead.
Fowler led the Association team that convinced government figures and industry leaders to reassure the public it was safe to dine out again.
“Ted Fowler is a true legend in every sense of the word, with a legacy that exemplifies the power of hard work and a drive to give back in service to others,” says Michelle Korsmo, President & CEO of the National Restaurant Association. “Ted’s extraordinary career, visionary leadership, and unwavering dedication to our industry makes him a perfect recipient of this year’s Legends Award.”
The honor is bestowed on individuals who have shown a lifelong dedication to the restaurant industry.
Fowler is still in touch with many of the big-name restaurateurs with whom he built the modern industry. Many were on hand to see him receive his Legends award at the Gold & Silver Plate gala hosted May 17 by IFMA The Food Away from Home Association in the Great Hall of Chicago’s landmark Union Station.
Article written by Peter Romeo. Reprinted with permission from our partners at IFMA The Food Away From Home Association. Read more about the awards event here
“I don’t know how I got here,” the then-CEO of Golden Corral told fellow directors of the Association back in the 1990s, “but I know I had help.”
Anyone familiar with Fowler’s five decades in the business can attest that the long-time restaurateur hoisted many a turtle himself during that stretch. Most of his career was spent at Golden Corral, where his influence is still evident.
Fowler was only the second individual in the chain’s 52-year history to serve as CEO. He spent years mentoring his successor, Lance Trenary, who took the CEO position in 2015. Trenary is no slouch himself; he won an IFMA Gold Plate award in 2022.
“I finally told him, ‘There’s nothing more I can teach you,’” recalls Fowler, who won his own Gold Plate in 2003. “‘You have my number.’”
“That was the way Ted ran the company,” says James Maynard, Golden Corral’s co-founder and first CEO. “He allowed people to be the best they could be. If he was working with someone, he wanted them to be successful. He really cared about the people, and they knew it.”
Fowler pushed hard to keep the business growing and succeeding, but that drive was tempered by a sense of humor that left many chuckling. “I sincerely believe he could have been a standup comic,” says Maynard. “He made it fun for all of us.”
The quips became known within the chain as Fowlerisms and would be a solid foundation for any stage act. Take for example his caution against complacency in keeping a brand out in front: “Today’s peacock is tomorrow’s feather duster.”
The corporate staff once even gathered the most memorable of those lines into a book, Trenary recalls.
The humor softened what even Fowler himself characterizes as impatience. “I like to get things done quickly,” he deadpans.
His Fowlerism for that go-go mindset: “The heck with the horse. Load up the wagon.”
His history in foodservice
Fowler entered the foodservice business at 16. A family friend ran a family-dining restaurant, and he took a job washing the dishes. He enrolled in Palo Alto College thinking of becoming a veterinarian, but he also kept his restaurant job.“I was making $2.50 an hour,” he recalls. The pay was enough to cover what the young Fowler saw at the time as life’s essential C’s: clothes, a car, Coors, and chicks.
He also loved the work, which he found to be outright fun. So, he had to make a choice.
"I thought, if I go into the vet business, I’ll bury my mistakes,” he recalls. “If I go into the restaurant business, I can eat my mistakes. And I make a lot of mistakes.”
After graduation, he ended up as a partner in a Dallas restaurant.
One of his managers there was hired away by a North Carolina upstart called Golden Corral, a pioneer of what would come to be known as the budget-steak segment. Golden Corral was all about value. It offered a steak dinner (but little else than steak) for under $2, and it was a hit.
When chain co-founder/owners Maynard and Bill Carl parlayed the business into a 16-unit chain in the Southeast, they needed a deeper infrastructure. In particular, they needed someone with operational savvy and financial discipline to oversee multiple units.
Their hire had spoken glowingly to the pair about his former boss, simultaneously telling Fowler about all the potential he saw at Golden Corral. Carl met with Fowler and liked what he found.
“Ted really measured up,” Maynard says. “He had all the attributes we were looking for. More importantly, he had the integrity, forthrightness, and aptitude to be a good leader.”
They hired Fowler, who had a clear knack for operations, which propelled him up the ladder. He became District Manager, then General Manager of Operations and, by the mid-1980s, President. He would add the CEO title when Maynard transitioned to Chairman and split his time between Golden Corral and its parent company, Investors Management Corp.
By the time Trenary joined the chain in 1986, “Ted was already a legend the current CEO says. “James had the vision. Ted built the foundation of the company. We then hammered out a lot of brand standards so we could stay on the right path as we expanded.”
“Just watching him was phenomenal,” Maynard says. “He’s such a hard charger, an iron fist in a velvet glove.”
“He had a grit that was unlike anything I’d ever seen,” adds Trenary, plus a “tenacity and over-the-top commitment to execution.”
The brand’s high sales volumes and profitability brought competition, particularly from a then-new challenger called Ryan’s. Their menu was much wider than Golden Corral’s, and its salad bar was a veritable buffet. The older chain saw its customers switching allegiance.
“We had 500 smaller stores,” Fowler says. “I told someone at the time, we’re making slide rules, and the pocket calculator is out there.”
“Competitors were beating our brains out,” remarks Maynard.
Fowler sums up his approach to competition as punching back twice as hard. If challengers were getting traction with bigger stores offering a wider array of choices, the best response was to out-do them at their own game.
The solution Fowler envisioned was opening big-box restaurants known inhouse as “metro stores,” a reference to their need for a larger market than the smallish trade areas Golden Corral had deliberately chosen for its small stores.
The metros featured a food bar that was a true buffet, with enough options for every member of the family. Each metro unit, for instance, sported a bakery and extensive dessert array.
The venture took off, in part through franchising, another endeavor Fowler championed.
“Greatness was thrust upon us,” quips Maynard.
Service with the National Restaurant Association
Fowler also served for decades on the boards of the National Restaurant Association and the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation (NRAEF), where he was a founding father of ProStart, working beside such fellow industry luminaries as Ted Balestreri, Richard Marriott, and John Farquharson.ProStart provides an alternate career path for high-school students who aren’t interested in traditional forms of higher education. It fits Fowler’s philosophy that the restaurant industry is a great place to work “for a year or a career.”
Fowler was serving as Chairman of the National Restaurant Association when the 9/11 terrorist attacks put the economy on hold. The restaurant business was one of the industries that suffered the most, a victim of the public’s fear that more turmoil and attacks were ahead.
Fowler led the Association team that convinced government figures and industry leaders to reassure the public it was safe to dine out again.
“Ted Fowler is a true legend in every sense of the word, with a legacy that exemplifies the power of hard work and a drive to give back in service to others,” says Michelle Korsmo, President & CEO of the National Restaurant Association. “Ted’s extraordinary career, visionary leadership, and unwavering dedication to our industry makes him a perfect recipient of this year’s Legends Award.”
The honor is bestowed on individuals who have shown a lifelong dedication to the restaurant industry.
Fowler is still in touch with many of the big-name restaurateurs with whom he built the modern industry. Many were on hand to see him receive his Legends award at the Gold & Silver Plate gala hosted May 17 by IFMA The Food Away from Home Association in the Great Hall of Chicago’s landmark Union Station.
Article written by Peter Romeo. Reprinted with permission from our partners at IFMA The Food Away From Home Association. Read more about the awards event here
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