It's Baton Rouge: Out To Lunch

This is an encore presentation of Stephanie Riegel's conversation with fast food impresario Ted Kergan. We decided to unearth this episode and run it again because Mr. Kergan is one fascinating guy. In 2018 when we recorded this conversation, Ted was the largest franchisee of Sonic drive in restaurants in the state of Louisiana. He owned 58 Sonic locations in the central and southern part of the state. When you think about how much can go wrong day-to-day in any single workplace - especially in a fast food restaurant where people unexpectedly don't show up for shifts, machinery breaks, and, by the very nature of the business, customers demand immediate service and almost always know exactly what the product is supposed to taste like - owning 57 of these establishments sounds like an impossible task. Well, how about owning 150? That's the total number of Sonic restaurants Ted developed in his more than 40 year career. Ted Kergan is originally from Detroit. When he made his way down South, Ted was in Alexandria