 "Photo: Photo by Aaron Katzfey")
On the day he helped open his chain’s 407th restaurant, Craig Culver, UW-Oshkosh graduate and president of Culver’s Butterburgers & Frozen Custard, gave a speech at Reeve Union.
As the helmsman of a growing restaurant empire, Culver had plenty of reasons to boast, but anyone expecting him to take a victory lap at his alma mater was in for a few surprise twists.
Last Wednesday he revealed the man within more than he reveled in his success, showcasing a panoply of emotions. Minutes before he spoke to the crowd, he was beaming.
“The campus looks great,” Culver said. “It brings back memories. It always makes me feel younger.”
Fresh off a blistering week of appearances and ribbon-cutting ceremonies that took him from Austin to Denver to Cincinnati and back home again, Culver returned to his old college to follow the advice he would later give the audience, to give back.
Even with his grueling schedule, he ended his speech with a college-like enthusiasm.
“How cool is that?” Culver said. “Coming back to speak where you went as a student?”
Nearly an hour earlier, University Speaker Series Chairman David Rathsack took the podium to introduce Culver, urging the crowd to make some noise as students from the Speaker Series Committee handed out plastic cups and flung yellow neon frisbees into the audience.
Culver led off with a few quick facts—he graduated from Oshkosh with a biology degree and a botany emphasis, his favorite movie was Caddyshack—before testing the microphone to make sure it was working.
“One, two, three,” Culver said. “I graduated from UW-Oshkosh. I can’t count to one, two, three.”
The audience cheered the joke and Culver, who said he enjoys being around people, did just that, peppering his speech with confessions.
“If you found my grades, you wouldn’t be very impressed,” Culver said.
Though he said the campus had not changed much since he graduated in 1973, he quipped that the bars in town had. Some of the divisive political issues from the late 1960s and early 1970s, though, such asthe Vietnam War and anti-war demonstrations that occurred around campus, were not as comical.
“It was a strange time, but a very interesting time,” Culver said.
A major reason why Rathsack thought Culver was a great candidate for the Speaker Series was because a lot of students likely didn’t know Culver was an Oshkosh alumnus.
“There are so many high caliber students who go here,” Rathsack said. “We’re a very underrated institution. We want to show people you can graduate from here and do something special.”
When Culver graduated from Oshkosh he was far from special, and he had a different career trajectory in mind than emulating his parents.
Culver’s father sat him down and asked if he’d like to take over the family restaurant, Farm Kitchen Resort, but Culver told his father, “I don’t want to be you and mom. I don’t want to work seven days a week.”
So his father sold the restaurant, and Culver floundered for a while.
“There weren’t a lot of people willing to hire me,” Culver said.
After working at McDonalds for four years—a job that took him four interviews to get— the idea germinated that would eventually become the first Culver’s restaurant.
“I had a dream to have my own business,” Culver said. “I wanted my own thing, I really did. I wanted to move back to my home town and buy the little A&W back that my parents started their foodservice career in.”
That meant moving back to Sauk City, Wis. and asking his father for money to start up the first Culver’s restaurant, which opened its doors on July 18, 1984.
Culver was candid about those early days at the new restaurant.
“Have you ever had a party and nobody came?” Culver said. “Well, we opened a business and nobody came. The only cars in our parking lot were ours.”
After falling into a near-depression, Culver leaned on his family for support.
“Without them, I wouldn’t be here today,” Culver said. “Every leader leans on a lot of people.”
And lean he did, expanding Culver’s to Reedsburg in 1987 and its first successful franchise in 1990, to its current tally of 407 restaurants in 17 states. Culver’s made $45.8 million in revenue in 2008, according to Yahoo!Finance.
After giving his background, Culver joked that he didn’t have any words of wisdom, then spent the next several minutes proving otherwise.
“Take some risks in your life,” Culver said. “I’m not talking about dumb risks, like standing on the hood of a car. I’m talking about calculated risks.”
Culver wasn’t espousing the virtues of money, really, but smaller yet more profound ideals, like speaking with every person he met, whether inside one of his restaurants or without, and being civil.
“Do everything in the framework of fairness,” Culver said. “Do the right thing. If you do that, somehow or another you will get rewarded. I really believe that.”
Though he admitted he’s struggled with finding balance in his own life—often missing his daughters’ volleyball games while he worked on his business—Culver stressed he is always trying to find a balance between his family, work and spiritual life.
“Strive for balance,” Culver said. “If you find balance, you’ll be good in every area of your life.”
Junior Troy Mrkvicka particularly enjoyed Culver’s emphasis on finding balance.
“I thought he had some good words of wisdom and an interesting take,” Mrkvicka said.
Freshman Jonathan Ehrlich thought Culver’s speech was very lively and perhaps showed him someone to model himself after.
“He brought a lot of thought to how I want to prepare myself for the future,” Ehrlich said. “What really brought it together was the words of wisdom and how he began his success.”
Culver’s words weren’t entirely for the crowd’s benefit; he could also be spunky, especially when he referred to his restaurant’s competitors.
“Some people have to go away, they really do, and it’s not going to be us,” Culver said.
But man cannot live on competition-squashing alone.
“Love what you do, or go do something else,” he said.
After the speech ended, Culver held court in an informal question and answer session below the stage.
Two-dozen audience members stood in a semi-circle around him, firing off a barrage of questions at close range.
He patiently answered their questions, as long as people milled around. Later as Culver posed for pictures with the students from the Speaker Series Committee, Rathsack was effusive with praise.
“He’s just a good role model,” Rathsack said. “I can’t think of a better model for the Speaker Series.”
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