Weinerschnitzel

[John] Galardi started his career in the fast-food business at age 12 as a soda jerk in Missouri. With his family he came to California at age 19 and, as fate would have it, got his first job from Glen Bell Jr., owner of Taco Bell. 'I went over and enrolled in Pasadena Junior College. I walked across the street and a guy was hosing the lot,' Galardi recalled. 'I said, 'Do you need any help?' Bell said he did and offered him a part-time job at 50 cents an hour. From this association, Galardi moved on to manage Bell's commissary at $150 a week and then into a partnership agreement with Bell to run a poor producing taco store. Working two shifts, with his ex-wife working three part-time jobs, Galardi managed to save $6,000. Meanwhile, Bell was having financial problems and asked Galardi to loan him the $6,000. Bell was unable to pay back the loan in three months and instead offered to sell Galardi the store for $12,000 cash. 'So my folks borrowed $2,000 from Household Finance on their furniture, I let everybody go and I worked 30 days to get the other thousands and I paid $12,000 for a little taco store in Long Beach. That's how I got into the ownership position,' he said. The next breakthrough came a couple years later when Galardi was approached by a man who wanted to build the hard-working Galardi a store on Pacific Coast Highway in Wilmington. It was next to one of Bell's taco stores. Bell told Galardi to take the deal and sell something other than tacos. 'So I came up with hot dogs,' Galardi said. 'Nobody else was in hot dogs and Glen's wife named the company. I was at dinner one night at their house and Bell's wife was looking at a cookbook and said you ought to call it wienerschnitzel. I told my wife going home nobody in their right mind would call a company wienerschnitzel. Three days later, I said, 'Hell, it's better than John's Hot Dogs