Ms. Jane Grote Abell

Jane Grote Abel grew up in a family business where in the early days, Donatos pizza and customers were literally served and entertained in her dining room. She came from a strong family where love, kindness, service and care ruled the day. This not only became the essence of who she was as a mother, business retailer and customer advocate; but it was what was infused into the Donatos culture for the thousands of employees, suppliers and customers to appreciate and acknowledge in an everyday way.

Abel did not have it easy growing up, but she also had parents that gave her a special upbringing with values she took with her in the midst of fighting and winning her family business back from the world’s largest fast-food retailer. Abel, like most of the rest of us, had her fair share of ups-and-down. Yet on the corporate front, during the battle of her life, she eventually found her voice, and in the process, the courage to stand up and claw back Donato’s from a corporate giant that was suffocating her and those who were a part of her life. She successfully re-negotiated better terms, and in the process a better way of life for her, her family and her business. This is a story of a very successful businesswoman and family matriarch coming into her own and finding ways to live her values while supporting others to do the same.

Jane Grote Abell, grew up in a family business, Donato’s, a pizza company with presently over 150 locations in 9 states. The company, at an earlier stage, was acquired by McDonald’s, but Abell later led a fight to buy the company back from the global fast-food giant and went on to serve as its chairwoman.

Starting as a child, Abell learned from the example her parents set. “I’ve been very blessed to have grown up in a home, while not perfect by any means, we were transparent, and authentic, and genuine, but also faced really hard times,” said Abell. “I grew up behind the very first Donatos restaurant and I remember lots of people coming back to the house because my dad didn’t have a dining room in his first restaurant, and entertaining people.” Her mother, Abell said, always opened the door for guests. “My mom taught me all about how to open your home to strangers who become your friends and family.”

“My dad worked really hard all the time, most birthdays or holidays. His restaurant was right in front of our house, literally 25 feet. We would go to the restaurant to see him,” she continued. Her father’s childhood experience working in a pizza place for an unscrupulous boss formed his own attitudes about running a business. “He wanted to provide an environment where people could treat others the way they wanted to be treated with trust, respect, dignity, caring, and basically the Golden Rule,” said Abell.

While he continued his education at The Ohio State University, Abell’s father continued to work in the pizza business. When he had an opportunity to buy the business, he dropped out of school, borrowed money from his dad and his wife’s father to start Donato’s. “So, that’s the restaurant I grew up behind. I say that I’m blessed because I really didn’t know any other way.” 

‘I can share this now, but my mom, on all of those evenings, also began to drink a lot,” said Abell. “My mom has been sober for almost 40 years. It’s day-by-day obviously, if you know anything about recovery and addiction. She taught us about addiction and disease, and she was open and honest about the struggles with it. While my memories of those evenings were awesome, the memories of the mornings were not. In the mornings, we were cleaning up beer bottles when we were getting ready for school and taking care of things.” This part of her childhood helped to teach Abell the importance of balance in life, and the fact that not everything is perfect for anyone. “It may look like they have it all together but, everybody has a story.” 

Abell was focused on competency even while growing up. “I became that middle child in the role of responsibility. During that time, I thought it was difficult because I didn’t know it wasn’t normal. To me, that was just what we did. We had to get up and clean up and go to school, then start all over again,” she said. Abell’s mom became an inspiration for taking control of addiction and helping other people in the same situation. “She just knew alcohol was getting in the way of her life. She decided to go to AA meetings and then decided to stop because she felt like it was something she didn’t need in her life. Then, she started a non-profit for a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center just for women.”

From both her parents, Abell learned about the importance of persistence and passion. “No matter what we face in life as a family or as a business, the quote in our family is, ‘Love your way through it.’ That resonates with me every time. I’ve applied that to my business life, to my personal life. No matter what anyone’s spiritual belief is, love is that golden thread that weaves its way through every religion. Every spirituality is love,” she said. 

Abell’s parents helped her to understand that sometimes the people who need the most love are those who seem the least needy, depending on the situation. Abell recalled a day she received a call at 10 a.m. about a driver who never made it back from a delivery the night before. “I got a call in the morning that they had found him and on his last delivery, two gentlemen had met him in the street and beat him up and left him to die for 20 bucks. He was an older gentleman who had been with us for five years in Cincinnati.” Abell dropped everything and decided to go to Cincinnati, even without really knowing what she was going to do there. “I was just packing my bags when my dad came in my office, very teary eyed and sad. He said, ‘Now remember when you get there, not only to love your way through it with the people in the store, but I need you to send love to the two people that left him on the street to die’.” 

“I had a good two hours driving to Cincinnati to be able to pray and meditate,” Abell said. “Loving your way through it doesn’t mean you don’t have consequences for human behavior, but you do it with love,” said Abell. Her father was a guiding light to help her see the other side of a tragic situation. “I was not going out that door thinking, ‘I’m going to love those two guys.’ I’m going to love on the store and love on the managers and the gentleman’s family. I didn’t even pause long enough to think about how I would feel about those two guys, that’s why it was so powerful.” Being able to think of this situation from another perspective was a powerful moment for Abell. “Sometimes, you need people like that in your life to make you pause and think.”

Even though Abell was raised with a family that continuously taught her the importance of keeping her heart open, she understood that not everyone grew up with the same kind of childhood experiences. “I also think people in our world have experienced trauma. When people experience trauma, they don’t always know how to take care of themselves. When people don’t love themselves, they can’t possibly learn to love others.” 

The family business grew around the central concepts of treating people with love, compassion and integrity, said Abell. “It was truly a family business. We started franchising. We had growing pains, but really it was based on the Golden Rule.” Abell saw her dad make customers the priority of the business and keeping the business focused on the core values it was built on. As the business grew, her dad talked about expansion and the future of where the company was going. “He would talk about our future, and our growth at Donato’s, and how we were going to grow the business and be around the world. He’s very philosophical and would always talk about, ‘Why?’ The why was always because we were going to make a difference on every block that we did business, and we were going to treat our customers with respect and our associates with respect.” 

Abell’s father emphasized consistency in the kitchen. His other company, Grote Manufacturing Company, focused on food processing so that the products were the same for all the customers at Donato’s. McDonald’s also emphasizes consistency and was in the market for new product lines to reduce its reliance on burgers. “They decided they wanted to buy us,” said Abell. “Through our three months of trying to decide whether we wanted to do this as a family, for my brothers and my sister everybody was feeling all the pros and the cons. The biggest con was how do you sell your family business and keep your soul. I was in charge to do that. That was going to be my role and figure out by studying the companies that grew big and their culture, and spirit, and who they were.”

Abell got in contact with the HR representative of Chick-fil-A, and they spent two days talking about how to keep love in a business and grow it. Following her conversation, the family made a decision. “We sold. Shortly after that, my mom left the business, and my youngest brother never came back. My oldest brother who was our COO, stayed for about a year and a half. The culture changed so drastically and so quickly,” said Abell.

Immediately there was a difference in tone and attitude from the new CEO. Abell felt as though her ability to voice her opinion was going away. “Not very long after, my brother left, my dad became a chairman and the person who was our CEO began making decisions that were inconsistent with who we were and what we were about. We were building way faster than we could develop our people, changing the concept, not the product. Going through that process, I slowly lost myself.” 

The new CEO brought a lot of changes. One time, Abell said, during a conference, the CEO asked 26 of 28 vice presidents to get up and stand at one corner of the room, while telling them ‘You have a future here’ as they walked. Slowly the numbers of people sitting decreased, until it was just Abell and a franchise partner of 40 years. The CEO looked at them both and said, “The people standing at the end of the room have a good future here, the people left sitting at the table need to think about their careers, put their resumes together, and think about their next career opportunity.” 

This was the time that Abell found herself approaching her job as if it were a game to be played, rather than something she did out of passion. “I wasn’t afraid I was going to lose my job because I had an employment contract. I knew I could still speak my mind, but I lost my courage to do it.”

Abell said she had lost out on what she had held as the important parts to her life. “I remember not seeing my kids and not balancing my time at the office. I also had stopped spending time in prayer and meditation and being grounded in my faith because I was working too hard.” One late night in the office, Abell became highly aware of what was happening. “I had one of those moments in life where I was like, wait a minute, what am I doing, and who am I? It was as if the Holy Spirit had washed over me and woke me up, like the lights came on.”

Four years later, it was rumored that McDonald’s was going to close Donatos. Abell felt as though the company had a destiny and that it was up to her and her father to buy it back. From there, she set up a team and presented her plan to McDonald’s, and it agreed to sell. Looking back at this time, Abell said it was when she realized what was important in life. “It became about the four Cs for me. Character, courage, conviction and compassion.” Abell said she understood the ideas of “courage to fail, and courage to take risks, but the courage to keep your voice in really hard times is really important.” She added another C. “I think being curious is really important for growth.”

Throughout her career, Abell recognized that there have been times she wished she kept a better balance with her own family. “Because my dad worked so hard, the one thing I said when I was young, was ‘I’m not going to do that.’ I wanted to make sure that I learned how to balance my life and I didn’t. The hardest thing was a personal one. You only get one chance with your kids and I didn’t want to mess that up,” she said. Abell changed her role from CEO to chairwoman. She understood that in the beginning she was too caught up in her own agenda, and the work to buy the company back. As she continued to accomplish goals, she kept trying to motivate herself to focus on balance next. But she came to understand, “You’re never going to have an ‘after this’ until you stop long enough to change what you’re doing because there’s always an objective. You’re a hard worker and you’re passionate about what you do. You just have to learn to prioritize.” As she started to see her life from this alternate perspective, she realized she wanted to make room in her life, first and foremost for her faith and family, and then the family business. 

This change in her priorities came following Abell’s divorce. She realized that she needed to make a lot of life changes. It also helped bring her to the conclusion that she did not have to have a leading role in the company to be able to give back. “I’m honestly not the best person to take our company to the next level. It’s recognizing that and where I was in my life to make a change to make it better and make room for my kids.”  

From this personal experience, Abell knew that she missed some of the important moments in her kids’ lives. She made sure that when her son grew up, became the owner of a business and started a family that she stressed the value of that time spent focused on family. “He’s working too much, and I keep telling him, ‘You’re doing too much, you’re following my same path,’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, but I admire you, you worked hard, and I appreciated what you did.’ But you just don’t get those moments back. It’s not worth it.”