I have a bigger picture on how you can help people and do things on a national scale. I think we have structural problems in the country that cause all the ills we see around us. The thing I admire about RoxSand is that at least she's trying to take care of her part of things. But we have national problems--the government's poorly run, we spend too much money, welfare is breeding on itself. We get taxed so much, and that affects the things I'm talking about.
I'm a perfect example of it. I'm just one guy who saved a little bit of money and spent every penny of it on the first restaurant I opened. If it hadn't done well, I'd have been out of business. Until I sold my restaurants, I had 22 of them and $65 million in sales. I don't want to brag about that, but if my tax rate wasn't so high, I would have had 44 restaurants and $125 million in sales. The idea is it's not important that I would make more money, but that there would be more jobs, more people working in restaurants, more architects busy designing restaurants, more contractors busy building restaurants. If we had better jobs and made more money, we'd have less crime, better schools. We'd be more sophisticated. We'd know that we should eat better. Things can be better, but we need an economy supporting all of these things. Stopping the eating of meat isn't the solution.
Meanwhile, the fringe loony groups are not going to influence how I serve food, or what I serve. I feel no social responsibility to them. I'm not serving meat just because it's the "right" thing to do. It's what people like to eat and that's the business I'm in.
But more than that, I ask, who are these fringe groups to say what we should and should not eat? It's so far beyond the realm of America and how people think here. I don't care who it is, it's like Big Brother. No one's going to tell Americans how to eat. It may even have a counterproductive effect in that Americans, historically, don't like to be told what to do. But also, they just don't agree. We've been eating like this for generations. There are great flavor profiles in what we eat. It's comfort food. I know these are simple answers, but these are what influence how people eat.
People are, indeed, pretty interested in their own health. For example, they are more conscious of drinking too much. Mothers Against Drunk Driving has done a fabulous job of saving lives. Drinking in restaurants definitely has dropped. Look what happened to T.G.I. Friday's and all those casual-theme places that concentrated on serving alcohol--their business has fallen off drastically. And people's interest in eating healthfully is one reason P.F. Chang's has been so successful--there are very few items on its menu that aren't healthy for you.
But P.F. Chang's was not a social decision. We went that way as a business decision. We wanted to serve lighter food with more interesting tastes and better flavor profiles. We didn't make that decision because we thought we should control what people eat. We're serving people better food because many of them want to eat it--so it was a good business decision, simple capitalism.
The public will tell you what they want. If you can serve food that's good for the environment, that's great, but that's not a big consideration with us. We are trying to create jobs and capital and protect our wealth. You can't dictate what people will eat. You have to be accessible and bend to what people want. You need to listen to what your customers want.
