Adopted
Cowboy Bill Biard went to that other school. He attended “six football seasons, which is how they measure time down there,” he says. Yet despite his alma mater, OSU’s School of Hotel and Restaurant Administration has adopted Biard, says Bill Ryan, associate professor and interim head of the school. “He has a great story of hard work and success.” Biard began his studies in pre-med then switched to geology and then to earth science education and finally to general business management, but it’s the jobs he held while working his way through school that eventually led him north to OSU. “I started in the restaurant business when I was in college, and after I graduated I helped grow a pizza business. It was revolutionary,” Biard says. “We delivered.” In 1975, he went to work in Tulsa for Casa Bonita, a new and innovative company that Biard says proved to be a good management training ground. Three years later, he moved to Dallas where he managed 10 stores as an area supervisor for Taco Bueno. After a short stint with another pizza place, Shotgun Sam’s, he moved to Claremore, Okla., in 1981. “Golden Corral had just bought the Sirloin Stockade chain, which opened up a new market. I chose Claremore,” he says, “and it turned out well.” In fact, Biard turned a mediocre Sirloin Stockade into one of the leading restaurants in the Golden Corral chain. Then in 1991, he and his wife, Linda, bought Claremore’s Hammett House Restaurant, a family restaurant started in 1969 and closed in the mid-’80s. “We worked with the Hammett family to bring back a legendary Oklahoma restaurant, and we’ve been going crazy ever since,” he says. That’s crazy in a good way. The Biards recreated Hammett House, keeping its tradition of good Oklahoma home-cooked food and monumental pies made from scratch, to make the landmark restaurant one of Oklahoma’s best.
Still, it isn’t just Biard’s business acumen that prompted the school to adopt him, and “It isn’t my good looks and personality,” he quips. Biard, an associate director of the Oklahoma Restaurant Association, also serves his profession as a member of the HRAD board of advisors, which influences the school’s curriculum. “We try to remind academicians what they need to teach students to enter our industry. It’s demanding work. Our world is not for everyone,” Biard says. “You might say the board is an intermediary between the smart people and the crazy people in our industry, the ones who know what it’s like day to day. “But my involvement goes back even farther. I’ve sent several employees to the school. It’s always been prominent in the way I feel about giving back to the industry — I believe in paybacks to your industry and your community,” says Biard, whose two sons are in the business, one as a restaurant manager and the other a chef on a private yacht. “And I’ve always been interested in the education part. I get a huge kick out of standing in front of college students and talking about what I’ve experienced,” he says. “That’s what keeps me loving it.” And of course, his “Aggie blood” keeps him involved with HRAD. “I have a lot of it in me. My dad and my aunts are all OSU graduates, and my uncle and his son were one of only a few father and son combinations to play basketball for Coach Iba. “I’m not one of those Sooners who can’t root for OSU when they’re playing someone besides OU. That’s how you get adopted,” he says, “and I’m still taking a lot of flack. I’m proud to do it. I get a kick out of doing more work at OSU than OU.” Eileen Mustain
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