TheGrio’s 100: Clarence Otis Jr, serving 400 million meals a year

TheGrio's 100 - Clarence Otis Jr., the chairman and CEO of Darden Restaurants, which owns the popular family-style chains, explains the company's recipe for success...

TheGrio Staff

Feb 25, 2010

Long before developers broke ground on a new $150 million shopping center near Richmond, Va., they surveyed residents to discern their dining preferences. Red Lobster and Olive Garden topped the list.

The developers, whose other properties tended to be in more upscale locales, acquiesced, and now the eateries serve a mix of the area’s working-class patrons and travelers from the nearby airport.

Clarence Otis Jr., the chairman and CEO of Darden Restaurants, which owns the popular family-style chains, explained the company’s recipe for success in Fast Company magazine’s July 2009 issue:
“On the continuum of intuitive restaurants versus systematized, analytic restaurants, we’re very analytic,” he said about the Orlando, Fla.-based company. “The direction of our business is based on understanding customers.”

Such shrewd analysis generates, on any given weekday or evening, throngs of hungry customers who don’t seem to mind waiting for the restaurants’ famously appetizing dishes.

WATCH CLARENCE OTIS DISCUSS THE ECONOMY WITH CNBC’S DARREN ROVELL IN OCTOBER, 2009
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With almost $6.7 billion in annual sales and approximately 180,000 employees, Darden is the world’s largest company that owns and operates its own restaurants. It values a culture that rewards caring for and respecting people, according to Darden’s website.

In addition to Red Lobster and Olive Garden, Darden’s restaurants include LongHorn Steakhouse, The Capital Grille, Bahama Breeze and Seasons 52. Fast Company magazine put it this way: ”[Darden] serves more than 400 million meals a year — the equivalent of feeding the entire U.S. population, with seconds for residents of California, Florida, New York and Texas.

Otis, 53, became CEO in 2004. He is not among the restaurant leaders who began his career tossing pasta or serving fried shrimp. Born in Vicksburg, Miss., his family moved to Los Angeles, Calif., when he was a child.

Raised in the city’s Watts neighborhood, Otis’ father was a janitor and his mother a homemaker who encouraged her son to read and learn as much as possible. His academic record enabled him to attend Williams College, where he was involved in theater. After graduating from Williams, Otis attended law school at Stanford University.

Although Otis said in a June 2009 New York Times interview that theater helped him learn the importance of teamwork, he hires people for their passion.

He also warned about trying too hard to plan a career.
“There are too many things that’ll pop up, good and bad,” he said, repeating what he considered the best career advice he’s ever received. “It’s about preparation and building skills. And if you do that, then you’ll recover from the mishaps, and you’ll be able to take advantage of the opportunities.”

Heeding that advice, Otis rose rapidly. He worked in corporate law, specializing in securities law, mergers and acquisitions, and his client roster once included financier Carl Icahn.
He later moved to investment banking, eventually serving as managing director for Chemical Bank, where he helped reroute the bank’s struggling public finance division.

Darden recruited him to oversee its finance arm in 1995 as it was spinning off from General Mills, and in 2004 he became CEO.

“Clarence Otis is sort of like the Barack Obama of the corporate world,” says George C. Fraser, president and CEO) of FraserNet Inc., a professional development and networking firm for African-American business professionals. “He’s bright, relatively young and has given those franchises some luster and swagger.”

Otis’ modest background is also is a key ingredient in his success, says Fraser, because it helps keep him grounded and in touch with people. “You’re feeding the public…a lot of middle-class Americans. To know what they like is important.”