[upbeat music] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein.

Welcome to Side By Side.

My guest today is a director of community investment for the investor management corporation.

That company employs 50,000 people nationally, but it all started with Golden Corral.

And our guest today is the chair of the board of Golden Corral, her name is Easter Maynard.

- [Narrator] Funding for Side By Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by: - [Announcer] Here's to those that rise and shine, to friendly faces doing more than their part.

And to those who still enjoy the little things.

You make it feel like home.

Ashley HomeStore, this is home.

- [Narrator] The Budd Group is a company of everyday leaders making a difference by providing facility solutions through customized janitorial, landscape, and maintenance services.

- [Announcer] Coca-Cola consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally.

Thanks to our teammates.

We are Coca-Cola consolidated, your local bottler.

[soft music] - Easter, welcome to Side By Side.

I have been fascinated by your work, especially your philanthropic work through the Child Trust Foundation, and other initiatives that you, your corporation, and your family have had over the years.

What got you interested in childhood education and literacy?

- Well, first of all, thank you for having me.

It's wonderful to be with you.

I think the thing that got me most interested, was growing up in a family that highly valued education.

My mother was an elementary school teacher.

Many of my father's dearest friends were school principals, school teachers, and have really shaped my life beginning as far back as I can remember, Education has just been a really important value in our family, and so as I went on and grew up myself, had a great educational experience, and ended up at the school of social.

- You went to Wake Forest undergrad.

- I did.

- And UNC grad school.

- Yes, I went to the School of Social Work at UNC.

And it was an amazing experience for me.

And it helped me begin to understand, that access to education and literacy was crucial for everybody on an individual basis, but more importantly for our society as a whole.

- How did you identify that, how did you locate the problem, the issue, the challenge, the need?

Was it an incident?

Was it something you read?

Somebody came to you?

How you realize that, you know, I need to get involved in this initiative in society?

- Well, I really would say that attending the School of Social Work was kind of the linchpin for me.

I had grown up kind of with the values in our family to volunteer in the community.

And you know, when I was at Wake Forest, I volunteered in a Head Start classroom, and I met a lot of young children who really needed the community support they found in the Head Start classroom.

And it just got me really interested in thinking about how do we help families with young children take care of them in a way that allows their brains to grow and develop?

And those early years are so important as you know, so I guess really, it just started through the volunteering.

And then when I was able to find an opportunity to have a career that could be based on doing something I just love doing, I was really just so thankful to have been at UNC.

- And we're glad that you're doing that.

So how do you help them?

I mean, give us an idea of what the programs are.

Do you just distribute money.

Do you have programs?

- Yeah.

So Child Trust is a foundation, we're based in Raleigh, and we fund work throughout the state of North Carolina.

We focus on policy and advocacy statewide, and then we focus on programming Raleigh east.

My parents both grew up in Eastern North Carolina, and that is an area of our state that is often left out.

And we really feel like there's so much promise in that part of the state.

That being able to invest in programs that are housed there seems really important to us.

- And then you're also Director of Community Investment for Investor Management Corporation, which actually the mother company that owns Golden Corral.

- Correct.

- What does that do?

- So we have a really strong commitment at IMC, to being a good citizen of North Carolina.

We care very much about the place where we're located and believe that the work that we do every day in our businesses should be contributing just as much to making the state a better place, as it is to being profitable.

So having a Director of Community Investment means that we have somebody who looks for opportunities for our business to give back, and do more, and be connected to folks throughout the state.

- So you're very busy.

You have a family foundation, you have this community investment with the corporation.

You have the Child Trust Foundation, costs a lot of money, but it also takes a lot of time.

How do you measure success, Easter?

In other words, when you give money, and time, and energy, and leadership, and all of that, how do you know when your work really is making a difference?

- I think that's such an interesting question to consider when you are looking at philanthropy, because it can be really difficult to have real clear measures of success, and yet it also can be very easy.

You can look at the one child who attends the Boys and Girls Club that you have helped fund, and get a new program going.

And their grades go from failing to thriving.

And that's one measure of success right there.

- [Nido] Yes, of course.

- Looking at that particular person.

- You light a candle one at a time, you can change the world.

You have another company called Fleet Feet.

- Yes.

- [Nido] What does it do?

- Fleet Feet is a running retailer.

So they sell running shoes, or walking shoes if you don't want to run, and apparel.

And they really are building a community experience around running.

So you can go to a Fleet Feet and your neighborhood and meet up with a group of other folks that are interested in, maybe they've never been running before, and so they're gonna do a couch to 5k program.

So you can build community there, and you can also outfit yourself to be a successful athlete.

- It's a retail retail chain of stores?

- Yes - I see.

Is it just a North Carolina or?

- No, it's all over the country, - It's all over the country.

Very interesting.

So Easter, you know, you've said that you've always had this interest in community service, and making the world a better place, and helping North Carolina, especially Eastern North Carolina to get resources, otherwise perhaps children, others cannot get.

But you're also involved in lots of other things.

You serve on other boards, both corporate and otherwise, which part of all that you do, really tugs at your heart?

- Ooh, that's a hard question because everything that I'm involved with speaks to me on some level, but I definitely would say, that the philanthropy is just incredibly gratifying for me because I had just learned so much every day about people overcoming adversity, and working through difficult circumstances to make their lives better.

And that just gives me such inspiration to try and do a better job myself, of being a better person.

- Yeah, and expressing gratitude, right?

You and your family have been blessed.

You work very hard.

You built a significant corporation, and you're trying to help other people do the same.

Tell me about Camp Corral.

That's intriguing to me.

Some 21,000 children have been in Camp Corral somehow?

- Well, we actually are up to having served over 30,000 children now.

- [Nido] 30 thousand children?

- 30,000.

This was such a great program.

Several years ago, well, it's been over 10 years now, I can't even believe it.

But my dad and I were talking about how could we help make an impact in the world by connecting with Golden Corral, the managers, the folks who were working in the restaurants, they all seem to have such a heart for service and giving back.

And we were trying to figure out a way that we could really leverage all these outlets around the country and reach, you know, as many people as possible, and also give our customers an opportunity to be involved in something meaningful.

We had a great relationship with DAV, serves veterans, and we had a real interest as a company in serving veterans and their families.

And so.

- Is it all for veterans and their families?

- Yes.

- Camp Corral is all serving veteran families?

- Yes, it's serving children of wounded and fallen military members.

- [Nido] I see.

- And it just was an unbelievable thing.

When we started it, we just started it in North Carolina first and tried to see how it would go.

And it just took off like gangbusters it.

- What is it, is it a physical place.

Is it?

- No, so we partner with camps around the country.

- [Nido] With other camps.

- Mm hmm, and we have a special training program about working with military families.

So then the counselors at the camps are really ready to provide the kind of support that the kids who come will need.

- And you pay for their fees.

- Yes, so we contract with the camps to run our week.

And so we'll have a special week, just for our kids.

- Oh, I see, I see.

- And this past summer, there were 17 camps around the country.

- 17 camps around the country.

- 17 camps around the country.

- All of them called Camp Corral for that week.

And all of them have children from veteran families, some wounded veterans, some perhaps who have died in the service of the country and so on.

- Yes.

And it has just been a transformational experience for so many families.

I cannot tell you the testimony we hear from people that how it just has made the biggest difference.

It gives the parents a week to, you know, rest from their duties as caregivers, and connect with each other.

It gives the kids an opportunity to be with other kids, who've gone through something similar.

You know, living at home with a parent who perhaps has a traumatic brain injury, or PTSD can be challenging.

It's a really different experience than kids who are not from military families have.

And so to put those kids together, where they get to form deep friendships, and support and learn from each other, and they get a week to just be kids.

And not have the kind of added stresses of family life.

It has just been marvelous.

- You know, you see, you probably don't know this about me, but when I was in college, and a couple of two, three years out of college, actually ran summer camps.

- [Easter] Oh, I did not.

- YMCA camps in North Carolina.

So I have a little spot in my heart for the value, and mission, and vision of these summer camps.

And you are absolutely right.

You can plant seeds of greatness in their minds, hearts and souls, and you can influence and impact the lives of young people as they grow up and mature in a very magical way and very, very useful way.

So you're doing some really significant things.

And yet you are the chair of Golden Corral, And I have to ask you, you know, we've gone through this pandemic, and I know hospitality as a whole, from border to border and coast to coast, has suffered measurably.

I hope we're coming out of it now a little faster than, we thought we might be.

Run us through that experience.

What happened to, you know, your restaurant chain effectively, do the people stop coming all of a sudden?

- Well, we decided ourselves, to shut down all of our locations on day one.

- You made a strategic decision to shut down all the locations.

- Yes, overnight.

- That's complicated, isn't it?

- [laughs] It was terrifying.

And yet we felt that that was the only choice we had because we wanted to do what was right for the health and wellbeing of our customers, and our coworkers.

So overnight, we went from a company earning over $2 billion in revenue to $0 in revenue.

And we kept our doors closed for about 60 days.

And then, we began to reopen as we could.

But as you know, different communities had different rules.

There, some places allowed you to have customers in your restaurant, some places required delivery or curbside only, it was a real challenge for us.

And as a company that had been in operation already 47 years with tens of thousands of employees around the country, to have to say goodbye to some of those people, was absolutely heart wrenching.

Golden Corral has a very family style culture, and we really love each other at Golden Corral.

And it was a hard, hard time to go through, but I have to give incredible credit to Lance Trenary, our CEO, he led with dignity, and loyalty, and grace, and creativity.

He just has really demonstrated the power of innovation and bringing that growth mindset that we all talk about.

It is the only thing that saved our company.

- Yeah, and sometimes, you know, out of adversity can emerge abundance.

Sometimes we have to go through the valleys before we get to the mountains and we learn in the process.

I'm absolutely convinced, Easter, that the pandemic has taught us so many lessons.

And one of them is to be grateful and appreciative for what we already have, and not always just to seek what else we want, but we have so much physically, mentally, spiritually, and so on, and that we will mature and grow because of it.

I want to understand the process.

So you sat in a boardroom and said, "We have to close down for the safety of our employees and safety of our customers."

What are the next three steps?

I mean, you have contracts with suppliers are bringing you food every X days.

You have inventory already in all of the restaurants.

You have, I don't know whether you own all your buildings or lease them, but let's say you lease some, then you have these leases with all these people.

So your expenses do not terminate at the moment you close your doors.

- [Easter] They do not.

- How does that work?

- Well, first of all, it's terrifying, [laughs] but we just basically formed action teams and sprung into action immediately.

You mentioned the leases, that was a huge liability for us.

And we had this amazing task force that started on the phone right away, renegotiating leases.

And we had amazing relationships for these 47 years.

We had landlords, who'd been working with us for almost that long.

- They were understanding?

- They were wonderful to work with.

Yes, it took a lot of time and effort, but we were able to get through that.

That was one piece.

Another piece was really helping franchisees think about what to do, like you mentioned inventory.

I'm really proud because so many Golden Corrals opened their doors to their community to distribute food, to support, you know, emergency workers and hospital workers.

- Homeless shelters and so on.

- Yes.

And you know, can't let your inventory go bad.

So you serve your community the best way you can.

So I just think those folks really showed what they were made of during the hardest time.

They really came through.

- When you close all these places and then you reopen them, how do you attract employees back?

- We have been so fortunate.

People have hung with us.

If they had to be furloughed for a month or two months, they were just dying to get back.

We have been so thankful because we've been able to maintain a lot of our teams.

Now we are in the moment that the rest of the country is in right now with labor shortages being a challenge.

But in general, in those early days, people were able to hang with us and wanted to come back because they felt an allegiance to the company.

- So Easter, you know, you grew up in a very strong home.

Your dad is such an accomplished leader across North Carolina and the country.

He's done some amazing things in his own right.

Your mom is a very, a wonderful leader in the community, and so on.

Are you the oldest?

I knew your brother and you have another brother or sister?

- It was just me and my brother who passed away in 2017.

- Yes, yes.

- And I was the oldest.

Yes, he would have said I was his bossy, big sister.

- Tell us just psychologically, how does it feel to be the oldest daughter now, the only child, with a strong dad, who's a leader.

You are an educated woman.

You came in and you jumped in, and you have arguments with him all the time?

- [laughs] Well, anybody who knows my dad, knows he doesn't argue.

He is just too sweet.

[laughs] He is such a nice person, that he and I have really good intellectually stimulating conversations, but he's really great at looking at things from a million different angles, listening to other people's point of view.

So we really don't argue.

- But, he always gets his way.

- I was gonna say, but he is always right.

[both laugh] - Yeah, I get it.

I understand.

What is it that you tell your children about leadership, about social responsibility, about community engagement.

Right, they see you, and they watch you, and you model the behaviors, and they learn from you.

But what is it that you actively try to say to them?

You know, we're all concerned about what we teach in the schools, we're all concerned about modeling for young people and especially K through, you know, K through 6 grades are very important years.

They say the first six years of your life are very formative years for character, for responsibility, for mindset.

What is it that you say to your children?

Are the two or three important things that they must know and master to survive and thrive in an ever-changing competitive world?

- Well, I really spend a lot of time talking about feelings with my children, because I think empathy is just crucial to living a life worth living.

So.

- Caring about other people, walking in their shoes, understanding their position.

- Yes, really trying to see things through somebody else's eyes and withholding judgment, showing compassion.

Really trying to be careful, and deliberate, and responsible in your own speech and action.

That's another thing we talk a lot about.

But at the end of the day, I want my children to be kind, and I want them to stand up for what they believe in.

And so we do a lot of talking about that at our house.

- Yeah.

Strength of character and understanding the world in which they live, and having gratitude.

I find that one of the most important skills that we can teach our children, regardless of what age they are, is awareness.

Simply being aware, who am I, who am I with?

What do I do?

How can I bring contributions to the environment, to my circle of influence.

It's amazing to me, the number of people who are, you know, not aware of where they are, even about our own America.

You know, that as an immigrant, they have great appreciation for this for America.

I'm very fully aware of the blemishes in its history, but I'm also fully aware of the goodness that it offers all of us when we look for it, and find it, and work towards it.

And Easter, I know a lot about Eastern North Carolina, because I went to school in Eastern North Carolina when I first came to this country.

So I know the goodness of the people.

What is the major concern today in Eastern North Carolina?

Is it employment?

Is it finding the capital to do things we need?

Is it medical resources in small and rural communities.

In your view, you work with that, you're very engaged with that.

What is it?

- Well, I think that we are in this moment, where rural communities are suffering from disinvestment.

The intellectual capital in those communities is seeking the best opportunities, and sometimes it means they leave.

And so we are in a moment in our country where we need to figure out how to best support folks, regardless of where they're born, so that they can develop into the leaders for their communities without having to leave.

And I do think that all of the things.

- When they leave, you mean for, for opportunities, for employment and.

- Right, and if we can support folks to be able to stay in their home communities where they want to stay, and use technology, which I think the pandemic has taught us a lot about, I do think we'll create some opportunities for folks in those disinvested communities to stay and continue to reinvest and build there.

And I absolutely a hundred percent believe, that having a strong public education system is key to all of that.

And so focusing on that is crucial.

- Yes, I know that your dad is very, very engaged with East Carolina University.

And East Carolina University has done a lot of good across the state providing education here and there, and starting a dental school, and, you know, all of these things.

What's next for you, Easter, you've done so much, and yet there's so much yet to be done.

The best is yet to be, what's next for you.

- Well, I would say right now, my main focus for the next five years is going to be on rebuilding Golden Corral.

We are in this moment where we've come out of the worst of the pandemic, I think, and we're moving in a new direction.

And the company is full of energy in a way that I haven't seen in years.

And I think that being able to be, essentially a 350 unit startup, that's how we're thinking of ourselves now.

- That's an interesting perspective.

- I think it's done wonders for the folks on the team.

The leadership of Golden Corral is just on fire.

You know, we had talked in our company about being on a hundred year plan, and every day is the start of the next hundred years.

And so we really see an opportunity to reinvent the Golden Corral for the next 50 years.

- To be innovative, transform yourself, to initiate and propel yourself forward in different ways.

And your company is a strong company, and you can imagine how smaller entrepreneurial companies or solo practitioners, how they're feeling as they try to rebuild.

This is something we should all be cooperative about, helpful with, and try to inject as much as we can our society.

That's why I admire so much Camp Corral, and the Child Trust Foundation, and the community investment that you're doing.

It's wonderful to have you here.

It's always fun to talk with you, and I wish for you great things as you move onwards, and keep on doing good things for America, and for all the communities in which you reside.

- Thank you, it's been wonderful to be with you.

- Thank you very much.

[soft music] - [Narrator] Funding for Side By Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by.

- [Announcer] Here's to those that rise and shine, to friendly faces doing more than their part.

And to those who still enjoy the little things, you make it feel like home.

Ashley HomeStore, this is home.

- [Narrator] The Budd Group is a company of everyday leaders making a difference by providing facility solutions, through customized janitorial, landscape, and maintenance services.

- [Narrator] Coca-Cola consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally.

Thanks to our teammates.

We are Coca-Cola consolidated, your local bottler.