ROUND THEM UP.

• Author: Heatherly, Charles
• Position: Golden Corral Corp. has 453 restaurants in 40 states - Brief Article

Ted Fowler rustles his rivals' best ideas to build a big spread and herd diners into Golden Corral.

One look tells you Ted Fowler loves to eat. He won't say how much he weighs, only that he's slimming down to 200 pounds -- almost trim for a 6-foot-2-inch man -- and that he started his diet somewhere north of 250. You would wage war with your waistline, too, if you had Fowler's job. As CEO of Golden Corral Corp., Fowler and his employees rustle up grub for millions of Americans at the Raleigh chain's all-you-can-eat buffets.

Golden Corral, which has 452 restaurants in 40 states, started with a single steakhouse in Fayetteville in 1973 and grew by copying the style of the Ponderosa and Bonanza steakhouse chains. You know the drill: Hand the customers plastic trays, take their orders, make them pour their own drinks into amber tumblers and move them to the dining room, where waitresses bring steaks and butter-and-sour-cream-slathered baked potatoes.

Since becoming president in 1985 and CEO in 1989, Fowler has fiddled with the recipe -- adding sell-serve bars for pasta, dessert, pizza and fresh bread. The focal point of a Golden Corral restaurant today is the Golden Choice Buffet, which offers 140 items, including chicken, ham, roast beef and turkey. Golden Corral still serves steaks, but they account for only 10% of sales, compared with 92% when Fowler joined the company as an area manager in 1977.

Sales have climbed with each new heap of food. Fowler predicts the company's first $1 billion year in 2001 -- including franchisee sales -- up from $449 million in 1991. Its sales in 2000 -- $968 million -- placed it at No. 4 in the North Carolina 100, an annual ranking of the state's largest private companies compiled for BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA by Arthur Andersen LLP. Last year, it was No. 6.

As for the companies it once copied, Golden Corral has turned the tables. In 1990, Ponderosa and Bonanza each had higher sales than Golden Corral. Now merged into Metromedia Restaurant Group, they posted revenues of $718 million in 1999, compared with Golden Corral's $899.2 million.

Fowler himself eats at a Golden Corral or a competitor about twice a week. Every time he looks in a mirror, he sees the kind of guy restaurant managers dread to see bellying up to the food bar. "If everybody ate as much as I do, we would be in trouble," he quips.

That's the razor's edge Golden Corral walks every day: It invites customers to eat as much as they can for about $6.90...