Eddie Flores Jr "The Father of Hawaii Franchising"
Eddie Flores Jr (1947-????) was a Hawaii businessman who was conductive in making L&L Hawaiian Barbecue into one of the most successful Hawaii fast-food corporations and popularizing the Plate Lunch to a National level. He purchased it and franchised it and served as its CEO. Eddie was interested in preserving and the flavor of the restaurant through a more entrepreneurship mindset that allowed him to tackle larger ambitions of a franchise concept. Under Eddie's leadership, L&L had been stable and slowly grew through a progression of steps in its expansions, opening new restaurants across the Hawaiian Islands and then to conquer the United States with eventual International recognition. He is credited as one of many generational founders as the business reinvented itself with each owners vision, but due to his influence in franchising the company.
"Eddie had vision, grit, and a ‘refuse to give up’ mindset. Most people would’ve said he was too weird, too late, or too poor. But he saw an opportunity and he road it like a wave. He was like Hawaii's Ray Kroc, but instead of McDonalds it was L&L. Probably one of the most easily recognized Hawaiian fast-food chains."
Immigrating from Hong Kong: Eddie Flores Jr was born 1947 and grew up in Hong Kong with a family that barely could make ends meet. The harbor would be filled with boats and the streets filled with people and all these signs just all over the place and the market being tin roofed and barely held together with a mountain of goods. The People who were not doing so well would be smashed together in these tiny places and spend much of their time on the streets, but if there were people doing just a little bit it could be easily seen in what they had. The state of how much someone had was easy to see back then and showed the city life was a place of hardship that people would want to escape if they could, but they couldn’t because all the jobs were in town. Around this time is when many wealthy Chinese took refuge in Hong Kong and capitalism was almost unregulated leading to many people living in poverty.
Margaret and Eddie Sr Flores: Margaret Kwai Lin Lum Flores (1928-2017), Eddies Mom was born in Hawaii and went back to China.
Eddie Flores Sr, Eddie's Father was born in the Philippines and went to Hong Kong to work as a Musician and he would later play with the parents of The Society of Seven a music group and they would be found playing music together.
Educational Hardship: Eddie had learning challenges with his attention span where he would be day dreaming and thinking and had his mind in the clouds always thinking about what to do next. He repeated grades four times.
Hawaii Immigration: Eddie came with his family who immigrated in 1963 to Hawaii when he was 16. He was registered to McKinley High School, but his father couldn’t find a job and sent Eddie up to San Francisco for High school and he came back to Hawaii for college.
Eddies Parents: Eddies Parent’s had come to Hawaii with an education of less than 6th grade comprehension, so finding a good job was extremely difficult, with his dad who worked as a janitor and his mom a cashier at Patty’s Kitchen or do dishwashing at Lynn's Deli. Seeing that hardship of seeing them come day in and day out had sparked something from inside for him and that was the beginning of his entrepreneurial spirit.
Money: Banking is very important to me. Most banks offer the same services, but I need a banker who is very personable – who knows me, so when I walk into the bank I get the same, trusted service day-in and day-out.
The L&L Drive Inn Purchase: In 1976, Eddie Flores was saving and earning money until he would qualify for a down payment on a loan that he would use to buy L&L Drive Inn® In with his business partner for $22,000 (2024. $122,000) as a gift to his mother from the Kitagawa Ohana. It was a place that was only a bit away at the corner of School st and Liliha st where Eddie's family lived at Liliha and Vineyard, so it wasn’t too far away and would be someplace close. Eddie's Mother always dreamed of owning her own business with her entrepreneurial spirit and when Eddie bought her L&L Drive Inn she was thankful, elated, surprised. Being a cashier and dishwasher she didn’t know, amongst other things, how to run a business, cook, or market.
“Mom…I want to buy you a restaurant! ‘It’s yours, you own it.” -Eddie Flores
To get the whole story it would take some time to sit down and take everything in from the beginning when L&L started so many families ago. A family started business that passed to another family that would continue to add to the business story with their own values and then another family to keep the name going. It wouldn’t be until much later that L&L would turn into a Hawaii-Franchise that people knew with a summary of its origins, so the story goes back to Lee & Lee the restaurants name sake back in Waimanalo.
The L&L Dairy: The L&L story begins in 1952, Waimanalo, with a place that would serve as a milk depot run by Robert Lee Sr and his son Robert Lee Jr as a father and son business “L&L Dairy”. The etymology of the name deals with the letters “L” in “L&L”, with the first “L” in the name standing for Lee Senior, and the other “L“ was for Junior. The company raised cows in Koko Head and used to drive them to Dairyman's to deliver the milk. There they would sell bottles of milk, half-gallons, and full-gallons at a time with customers who would stop by and pick their milk up. The dairy would move from Waimanalo to a plant in Honolulu, until they were able to expand to an area that was previously used as a bus turn around area and build a small shop big enough to sell bottles out of on Liliha st. There were two bus routes at the time with one going up the hill while the other one went and turned around there, so many people were already familiar with the spot.
The Lee’s would go and take milk to the people or drive it up to them, because they knew who their customers were and vice versa the area of kids knew one another too with the limited options of places to hang out. Later on the L&L Dairy would look to expand further into other industries like food service where they would open a take out window to offer plate lunches like “chicken with two-scoops rice with the L&L Dairy milk” [ref.Barbara Duarte. Lee’s Daughter] that people enjoyed. The owners would try to save where they could, so sometimes customers could see them cutting napkins and straws in half to cut costs and maximize profits. Although there are many L&L around the world the location in Liliha has become a sort of Local Liliha Landmark as well as a living Museum piece as its stands at 1711 Liliha St.
The First Owners of L&L, Becoming a Drive Inn: The L&L Dairy was sold 1959 where it would go under a new name “L&L Drive-Inn” and would continue to pursue food business and focus on plate lunches, malts, hamburgers, loco moco, beef stew, chili frank, and changed its colors to orange and white. To show what it was like back then there was a dress shop, a pharmacy, barber shop, Marujyu Market, Jane’s Fountain, and Hoy Tin Kitchen. The local way people would buy was based on value and community, so the plate lunches gained some weight and were seen as fat plates of good value making it a place that people would feel satisfied for sure.
The Third Owners of L&L, The Kitagawa Ohana: The Kitagawa Ohana, Yoshiko Kitagawa (1919-2018) was the third owner and was from the Kitagawa Ohana whose ancestors came from Wailuku Maui Restaurateurs and before that Okikamuro, Suo Oshima, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan. Hiram Kitagawa would keep in touch with the Jodo Mission of Hawaii and Okikamuro Kai where the stories of that part of Japan have a lot to do with tropical plants and fishing as a large part of life. She would have two sons Hiram Kitagawa and Eric Kitagawa. She also had three daughters Mary Lim, Dianne Douglas (Ashley), Audrey Kitagawa. Customers referred to Yoshiko Kitagawa as “Mrs Kitagawa”. The family were practicing Buddhists and Shintoists who sent their children to Christian and Catholic schools where the family would have a wide range of exposure to different religious beliefs and mixture of indigenous and native belief systems. The way the business would run would be in consideration of the spiritual and speak to the soul and in this case food that speaks to the soul. All beliefs that led to different paths and all leading to one great plate lunch for all.
Hiram used to make the hamburger patties by hand and shaped it with care as he knew people were always coming to order their hamburgers and hamburger steak and that ground beef was part of the reason people could come in. People would have to sit there thinking at times what sort of hamburger steak they would want, because there would be the classic and the customized teriyaki hamburger steak people would get. There was thick-gravy sauce as well as thick-teriyaki barbecue sauce available where people would go for the hamburger steak and have to decide which one they would be having the yummies for. It was a decision of the salty and meaty or the savory and sweet that really would hit the spot. An employee from that time remembers there would be a Hawaiian boy who would stop by on his walks home from Kawananakoa Middle School who would always get a mini Hamburger Steak with Teriyaki Barbecue sauce all over.
Yoshiko Kitagawa sold it to Eddie Flores who would then be the fourth owner of L&L and she really wanted him to take care, so Yoshiko Kitagawa would stay back after the business was sold and help the new owning family get adjusted by teaching and talking with them. She would go on to show Eddie’s Family how to prepare things, clean up, make the dishes, and cook the hamburgers. The whole family would work there, so they had kept one another accountable, the place had so much history, Eddie was there, his sisters were there. They would be working for nothing to kind of get things going with the way business entrepreneurship runs and understanding that would be a key take away from entrepreneurship.
Shortly after that year Eddie’s mom got tired of working at night time and tired of working those hours and that's when she would be working daytime shifts, so Eddie was looking for someone to take over half the interest on the loan. He would end up going to his good friend Johnson Kam. You could see some of the family working in the back if one stuck around long enough and there would be small pots on the back stove with maybe a gallon, but no more than that staying nice and hot. Johnson's friends in Hawaii saw him having a successful business when things were getting really rough out there with all the restaurant closures in Hawaii's tough Fast-Food climate. He would help his friends for the sake of helping them when they would come over to him asking if he could help them with their own L&L Drive Inn, so he helped the first friend ????.
Then he helped a second friend and a third friend and Eddie started to take notice about it and asked Johnson as he and Eddier went on a vacation to Maui that it didn’t sound right without making money the Chinese Way, because he was thinking of the Local Way in a time that he had to think more about His Way. Eddie asked him if he wanted help in making it into a franchise and he agreed as with many things suggested to him from Eddie, because he trusted him for so many things with his financial decisions like home real estate, entrepreneurship, vacation strategies.
"Some people might not be old enough to remember, but there was a time where people didn't know what plate lunch was. They didn't know spam musubi, chicken katsu, or even what to expect from Hawaii food. L&L gave people an idea of what to expect when going to a Hawaii plate lunch joint." -Customer
In 1991, during the Gulf War, at the time it was the first “First Hawaii Recession” that lasted until 2000 for nine years and L&L grew from what some say was a recession proof business. The Plate Lunch was something that made people feel a little bit better with the struggles they were dealing with. The company would offer some onolicious plate lunches with musubis and drinks in a quick service restaurant environment and would expect to pay a lot less than a restaurant-chain or fancy place in town that needed tips from being a sit-down place. Keeping prices affordable and serving comfy food is what makes people go more to the plate lunch as a sort of food that reminds them that everything is going to be alright. When people don’t have money, people eat at L&L, people don’t go to Michel’s, or a Famous Chef’s restaurant, people go back to the basics of food.
Family Entrepreneurship: The family didn’t have the money to be able to afford a manager or they couldn’t hire a manager to run L&L Drive Inn as a small-business. Because the cost of that is high for a bust your butt sort of job and to get someone who could do it a company might have to double their sales to break even, so many times people think about “What if it's a Family business?”.
In the Hawaii Local culture there are things that overlap from all sorts of cultures like family in Hong Kong or American-Asian and Hawaii-Local and one of those things is taking care of the family and helping others who are loyal and capable and never forgotten.
At the time he was working as a Business Broker who sold restaurants, bars, and so on with the lists where he would find success. He would be doing real estate and always be looking and checking on the market to see when there would be a good location and he would go over and tell his partner Johnson and show him that it was good and tell him how it was good and say “Let’s Open it there”. Johnson would go and look for one of his loyal employees that they felt had potential and would work with them on their financial terms of if they needed 20%, 30%, 40%, or 50%, and work out for how long and what they would need and get them going with a guaranteed loan and lease. Eventually they would sell it to the employee for 100% where they would own the business who would learn the business, because most of the people interested were immigrants and mostly Chinese immigrants who had no business knowledge and barely spoke English and could work very hard.
Business Philosophy
Shidler School of Business: Eddie would immigrate to Hawaii and live in a family household with nine family members. In his years in college he would really enjoy spending his free time going to Honolulu‘s China Town with several visits a week where he made all sorts of memories.
“It’s a way to say thank you and I am very proud to say that I graduated from Hawaii Shidler school of business a long time ago and I don't want to say when. But a long time ago.” -Eddie Flores (UH Manoa)
He went and graduated from University of Hawaii with a bachelor's degree in Business and worked for the bank for a couple years and would find himself going into Real Estate where the big money was being made. He didn’t really have any entrepreneurship experience, but he was seeing the numbers at the bank that showed where the money in Hawaii was coming from and much of the business transactions had to do with Real Estate deals. To make a real estate business there has to be a decision to become an entrepreneur and without any sort of experience much of the things back then was self taught and people would have to go on their own without help preparing themselves for the real estate exam and go get that Brokers License. People back then really had no idea what they were doing and had to go in practically blind and be exposed to all the hardships right away and have to earn or burn. Eddie started his own real estate company in 1971 at the age of 24.
Failing Forward is a Powerful Lesson: The actions that people fail to take are keeping them failing steps in their own success and that adaptability and execution are a choice. A lot of that is being aware of the place like a small town or an island and a place where people are very aware of who has dealt with who and who knows who and that raises the stakes of being hyper-aware of a person's history and their families history and how they are viewed by the rest of the people on the island. Not only for those who do business, but socially as well, so it is limiting, but it also multiplies the opportunities by four times as much as elsewhere with the higher social risks with the stakes makes a great place to grow if the right action is taken. It can also be said that its about people who like to make the right business choices and work for their own happiness by taking a sort of self accountability. That sort of mindset helps when a person has dreams and their head in the clouds, all that stuff, overthinking, but without the non-action of it all and actually sitting there and deciding to take action on something. Overtime it becomes a state of mindflow where the person goes into this sort of business mode and become fully immersed and sometimes lose track of time for better or worse because of how engaged they become in making decisions of what to do and what not to do, both are thoughts that take decision making, and a firm belief that the route they are taking has a better chance of going forward with what the person wants.
Entrepreneurship Mindset: It is pretty simple at its core and some people might say you have to be born into that sort of mindset, but there are all sorts of little things that can make someone have the entrepreneurship mindset. Being born into a really poor family can make someone see all sorts of things like the family having a hard time needing to decide what limited foods to eat or what limited opportunities can come and even the help a person could receive just based on their financial power. The obvious signs can be what people do and that could be how people passed the time and what goals they had. Eddie always saw the life he had growing up and wanted more and dreamed of more and would go and do something about it, even at ten years old trying to have growth in income from a slice of watermelon. True story, Eddie would go to the store to buy a slice of watermelon, a fat one for a dollar and slice it into three pieces and sell it to his brother and sister and make money. He would make a profit off of his family members as a kid and he enjoyed the idea of making money, so making money in that sense is sort of an interest and then later on growing into something else. Being exposed to the sort of family on Eddie’s mother side especially his mom who liked to wheel and deal and seeing that all the time it really was the exposure that was part of it too.
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