Joe Brumit

Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur and Philanthropist

By Joe Brumit

The day that I received a message to write a piece for our Class of 1970 website just happened to be the 55^th anniversary of my beginning to work in an industry that I never dreamed that I would stay in. On November 1, 1968, I started to work as a crew member at Burger Chef in Oak Ridge. At that time, if you were lucky enough to find a job, you held on to it. It was not particularly what I wanted to do in my life, but growing up as we did, if I wanted spending money for clothes or anything else that I knew my parents could not afford to help with, that’s what I had to do. 

I worked there for the remainder of high school and what little time that I attended UT, which was not long. I was promoted and transferred to a unit in Morristown in 1972. I ran that unit until the corporation decided to close it six months later and I was sent to Alcoa to oversee a unit there. 

Two years later I met and married Janice Watson. In October 1979, a district manager for Burger King kept stopping in my store and later made an offer to me to switch to Burger King. I realized that Burger Chef was not going to be in business much longer and I decided to make the change and start a new career with BK. 

I started as an assistant manager and later was promoted to General Manager of the unit on Clinton Highway in Knoxville. A year later the corporation decided to sell the units In Knoxville to a franchisee and asked me to stay with the corporation and moved us to Winston-Salem/Greensboro, NC. I oversaw a unit in Eden, NC and then Greensboro. 

After a short stint as a general manager, I was promoted to district manager for part of that market in North Carolina. After 18 months, I was promoted again and moved to Atlanta. My position was called franchise district manager but currently is called field consultant. 

I worked with franchisees to help insure that their businesses were managed according to BK standards and helped them improve their operations and profits. For 18 months I had the New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of Florida markets. I traveled to those markets every week from Atlanta. I was promoted to the entire Atlanta market for the next 18 months. While working with those franchisees, I decided that that was what I eventually wanted to do. If they could be successful, I could, too. 

Burger King had a program that once someone had 10 years with the company and reached a certain level, they would help the individual become a franchisee. Most of the franchisees that I worked with in the Atlanta market were former executives of BK. After 10 years with BK, they decided to drop the incentive program, much to my dismay. 

Coincidentally, a senior vice president from BK was recruited by Hardee’s to become their new president and CEO. Fortunately for me, I became part of that trickle down and was recruited to move to Hardee’s as a regional manager and supervised most of the southeast, (650 restaurants). Three months after I made that move to the best corporate position that I had ever achieved, a BK franchisee that I had worked with called and said that he was purchasing 13 Arby’s restaurants in North Carolina and wanted me to come on board as his operating partner.  We moved to Asheville, NC, where we knew no one and started over for less money and a huge debt hanging over our heads after signing on the dotted line to help buy those 13 Arby’s.

We struggled for the first few years with my partner but built two new Arby’s and three Checkers Drive-Thru restaurants in South Carolina. Five years into that partnership, my partner decided it was time to go our separate ways. He took the three Checkers; I took the 15 Arby’s and secured the funding to buy out the difference in our equity from him. 

June 6, 1994, was Independence Day for us. I went from not being able to sleep at night because of a dysfunctional partnership, to not sleeping at night because it was all on us. That did not last long though, because I gained the freedom to manage and lead our company the way that I knew it needed to be led.  

 In 1995 I brought in a junior partner to help grow the business. By 2007 we had built 19 more units and my partner offered to buy me out and allow us to retire. Because of last-minute missteps with the bank that was going to finance the deal for him, they bailed on the deal and I made the decision to be the bank and hold most of the debt for him. 

Requests of restructures started arriving. I helped with two restructures and decided it was time to unwind the deal. We parted ways as I took the assets of our old company back under a new company, Brumit Restaurant Group. I gave part of the new company to JoAnn Reilly, vice president of operations, to insure that she remained with us. She had been with the company since 1989. I wanted to keep her expertise and  worked with her to oversee operations. 

I immediately started working with Greg Catevenis, the  new company comptroller, to develop his skills in the finance and development areas. He developed quickly and I gave him part of the company to insure that he would be with us for the long term. I had the most important parts of my team put together and they helped fine tune the rest of the team. 

We bought 10 restaurants toward the end of the last recession and aggressively started building new units. We currently have 65 restaurants in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee, with 15 more on the drawing board, mostly in East Tennessee. 

When Covid hit in 2020, JoAnn and Greg assumed daily operations to allow me to stay at home and avoid the virus. JoAnn had been the president of Brumit Restaurant Group for two years and Greg was the senior vice president and CFO.

Janice and have served in the community for many years. Our focus has been on children, education, and health. We have been on and or chaired many of the major nonprofits in the Asheville area. Janice chaired and served on the Board of Trustees at UNC Asheville, and I did the same at our community college, Asheville Buncombe Technical Community College. I served on the United Way Board and was on and chaired the YMCA Board. 

We have been blessed and have a firm belief in giving back. Even though I was an average student at ORHS, I believe I received an excellent education. That education along with additional education and executive training that I received during my corporate years helped me realize the importance of higher education. 

For years I joked about my education being a Ph.D. from the School of Hard Knocks, but this past spring I received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from UNC Asheville for my years of service to our greater communities. I also received an honorary degree from  AB Tech.  I am proud of the work that we do in education and the acknowledgment for that work is appreciated. We established endowed scholarships at AB Tech, UNC Asheville, and Appalachian State University. The Brumit Center for Culinary Arts was named for a gift to AB Tech, The Janice W. Brumit Pisgah House, the chancellor’s residence at UNC Asheville, was named for a similar gift, and the foundation offices at Appalachian State were renamed Watson-Brumit Hall. 

We assist with an organization that helps battered women and children, helped with the renovations of their facility, and will help with an addition to their shelter. This allows these women and children the opportunity to escape a life of constant abuse and helps them on their way to starting a new life. 

We and nine other couples combine resources and pay for building a new home for Habitat for Humanity every year. This allows people that may not experience home ownership or build generational wealth to do so. 

In retirement, we still serve on a few boards, but are slowly backing out in order for the younger generation to step up and take the helm. We travel more, checking countries off our bucket list. We enjoy cruising and doing photo safaris in South Africa. In our spare time, we enjoy living in the true dream home that we built 20 years ago on a mountain above downtown Asheville. 

Note: Joe attended Pine Valley and Glenwood Elementary Schools and Jefferson Junior High School. His family moved to Oak Ridge from Johnson City mid-third grade.