CRANE CLUB AT TESORO - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Executive Director of Hospitality
Job Titles:
- Director of Business Development
Job Titles:
- Chef Emeritus Senior Advisor
Job Titles:
- Senior Advisor
- Chairman of Lessing 's Hospitality Group
- Executive Vice President / Business Development
Job Titles:
- Executive Vice President / LFSM Group
Job Titles:
- Senior Advisor
- Executive Vice President / Franchise Group
The "Happy Days" of the 1950's were the perfect setting for Lawrence's innovative personality. Prior to the rise of American consumerism brought on by World War II, small businessmen saw themselves as humble shopkeepers. They were good at working hard tending to the nuts and bolts of their businesses. Small food service operators were usually good in the kitchen and rarely stepped out from behind the counter to embrace the bigger picture. Lawrence, however, saw the potential of making connections with the movers and shakers of the industries booming around him. He decided to leave the day to day operations to trusted employees while he told the Lessing story to decision makers who could use Lessing's expertise but didn't know it yet. This innovative change in the role of the humble shopkeeper transformed Lessing from a little lunch counter operator into a highly regarded food service contractor. He called on every company executive who would listen, and before long Lessing's Hospitality Group began to handle the food service for America's corporate giants like New York Trust, Chemical Bank, Reynolds & Co., Smith Barney, Goldman Sachs, Regis Paper and the New York Stock Exchange.
Maxwell Lessing was an innovator. He responded to the explosion of the urban worker population in the 1890's by opening the first convenient lunch counter in New York's Financial District. For the first time in American history, workers who lived in boarding houses that supplied meals left home to go to work, forsaking one of their free meals. They had little time and less money for lunch. In addition, women were joining the work force in droves during this era and began to patronize places they once dared not enter, climbing onto lunch counter stools and venturing into cafes in the evening without escorts.
By 1893 the country had slipped into a severe four-year recession, and the self-service lunches available in saloons on the honor system began to suffer an enormous amount of theft. One after another, saloon owners were forced to eliminate these lunches. Maxwell again saw their setback as his opportunity, and he responded by expanding his low-price, pay-as-you-go lunch counter operation to multiple locations in office buildings around Wall Street.
Job Titles:
- Chief Operating Officer
- President
Job Titles:
- Director of System Analytics