FRANCHISEE SPOTLIGHT Sunny Ghai

Company Name: Ghai Management Services Inc.

Partner(s): Harsh Ghai, Bob Uppal

Year You Became a BK® Franchisee: 1998

Number of Restaurants: 145

State(s) Your Restaurants Operate In: California

How did you become a BK franchisee? The company was offering a real estate parcel to the BK development manager at the store where I worked, and I was working with BURGER KING® franchisee Gussie Hampton at the time. I liked what I saw, and when a small in-line BK® came up for sale, I bought it and started working for myself. That was on April 1,1998. There was no looking back after that.

Tell us about your company’s background. I was born and grew up in Mumbai, India, in a businessman’s family. I went to parochial school and graduated from Mumbai University with a degree in commerce and economics. I got involved in the family business (hotels/liquor/propane distribution) at the age of 19.

If you have business partners, how did you meet? I have one minor partner, Bob Uppal. We connected when he approached me about opening a BK in his gas station as a co-brand. I kept him as a partner as I grew.

In your opinion, what stands out about the BURGER KING brand? Our product. We have the best food in the hamburger segment and need to keep capitalizing on flame broiling.

Going forward, what are your top three business goals for your company?

1) Increase AUVs by pushing top line sales and profitability.

2) Improve the image of our restaurants.

3) Achieve excellence in OPS and customer service. I look at brands like Taco Bell who were in worse conditions than we have ever seen but have now traded places with us. We can also do it.

What is the best piece of business advice you have received? Avoid being a part of tests and pilots on your own dime. Let others pay if they want us to test for them.

What do you feel is the biggest challenge currently facing franchisees? In my California market, the labor laws will stifle growth and make it unviable to operate. Nationally, it’s the competition that is hurting us big time, and we are not facing it strongly enough as our competitors stream past us.

What is the biggest industry change since you started? Delivery and aggregators. I could never have imagined 25 years ago we could deliver our food.

Tell us about your family. I met my wife of 40 years, Tina, on a trip to London in 1979. Love at first sight. It took a lot of work to convince her to leave the U.K. and come with me to India. We married in 1983 and completed 40 years together on Feb. 27, 2023. In 1994, she expressed her desire to move overseas for a better academic life for the kids, and we ended up in California.

We have two great kids.

Harsh graduated from San Jose State University and became my boss. He oversees the business now. I put a drive thru headset around his waist when he was 16, and now he is helping to run the company. He’s married to a phenomenal young lady, Gurbir, who is also handling high-level finance for us. They have two gorgeous girls, Saanjh, who is five, and Reyhat, who is four months old.

Our daughter, Ritu, graduated from UC Berkeley with a political science major and went on to Columbia University to do her JD. She started at a top Wall Street law firm, Sidley Austin, and is currently an associate attorney at Google. She married a smart kid, Harsha, and they have two adorable kids, a boy, Ronav, who is four, and a girl, Navya, who is two.

Ours is not a rags-to-riches story, but one of sacrificing everything we had in our home country to ensure that our kids had the best opportunities. We are very proud of them and have no regrets of what we left and traded into.

Tell us about your personal interests. Ha ha. Negotiating leases and celebrating when I get a good one signed!

Traveling, of course. I’ve been everywhere from Iceland to Machu Pichu.

Occasionally dabbling with Bollywood legends.

If I weren’t a franchisee, I would be … still self-employed as I have never collected a paycheck from an employer in my entire life. Real estate is what I love, and that’s what connected me with people who pointed me to BURGER KING. I must name the person who was the “pointer,” and the old timers in the BK business would know him. His name is Fred Phillips, former development manager at BKC. n