What started in the early ‘80s with teenager Jeff Farmer rolling pizza dough at a Domino’s Pizza restaurant has turned into a Hoquiam-based family of Domino’s franchise owners with stores in Wenatchee, a few in Oregon, and a number in the Seattle area.
Jeff Farmer got the dough ball rolling with his first franchise in Tuesday, Ore., in 1987, winding up with the new franchise in Hoquiam in 1988. His four children are all graduates of Hoquiam High School. Two of them, sons Pat and Chris, got into the family business soon after graduation and have helped expand the family territory to cover much of Western Washington and portions of Oregon, and through a son-in-law of Jeff’s, across the Cascades into Wenatchee.
“We have grown to 15 stores,” said Jeff. “Ten stores in the north Seattle area, basically from Shoreline to Everett, and then we have five down in the Oregon area; three in the Portland metro area, and we just opened stores in Newport and Warrenton. And we’re building in Seaside, Ore., and that should be open in October.”
Jeff still lives in Hoquiam with his wife, Gina; Chris lives in Kenmore and Pat lives in Vancouver, all close to their franchises.
The beginning
As can be expected, some of the early attempts Jeff made at franchise success involved some less-than-perfect decision-making. It started off well, with his first franchise in Tuesday.
“I then decided I wanted to be bigger and better and I stupidly sold that store and bought four in Boise at the age of 23.” When asked how that went, he admitted, “Terribly.”
Domino’s was still pretty new at the time, and unbeknownst to him after his success at his Oregon store, the owner of the four Boise franchises was from Montana and, according to Jeff, didn’t do much to supervise those stores.
“They had a pretty terrible reputation. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it didn’t take long to find out,” he said.
He sold those Idaho stores. He and Gina, were looking at opportunities to get to a coastal area, and Aberdeen and Hoquiam were ripe for franchises, so in 1988 he left his hometown of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, bought the available building at 2605 Simpson Ave. in Hoquiam and was open for business eight months later.
“It opened up being one of the highest volume stores in the State of Washington,” he said.
There was some competition in the pizza game in the day; Pietro’s in East Aberdeen, a Shakey’s, a Pizza Hut and a Godfather’s. But the delivery emphasis by Domino’s had great appeal right off the bat and the store has held strong for 30 years. Not to say the Farmer family hasn’t had to ride out some pretty rough economic times.
“We’ve had our ups and downs, had to ride the waves of the economy like everybody else here,” said Jeff. “And when the Weyerhaeuser mill and Hoquiam Plywood shut down we rode some tremendous waves.” But today business is strong, as evidenced by the steady stream of cars sporting the lighted Domino’s signs atop delivery cars seen on every roadway in the area seven days a week.
“We are absolutely blessed,” said Jeff.
The sons
Sons Pat and Chris took somewhat different directions after high school, but ended up in their dad’s line of work.
“Chris got his (Associate of Arts degree from Grays Harbor College) and decided he didn’t want to go for a business degree,” said Jeff. “He decided to go to the school of hard knocks and work for me.” This was around 2012.
Soon son Pat, who was the area director for Young Life for “quite a while” and worked as associate youth pastor at the Four Square Church, “decided they both wanted to join Domino’s and make it a career,” said Jeff, so he and Gina helped them out, getting Chris into a franchise in Woodinville and Pat into one in Lynnwood. Both were high density locations and a “great opportunity, crazy opportunity.”
All the Farmers were enjoying success with their franchises when two years later, in 2014, both Pat and Chris approached their parents.
“They cornered Gina and me and asked if we would partner with them and start growing the business and acquiring stores,” said Jeff. “We said absolutely not, we didn’t want anything to do with that.”
That was mom and dad’s initial reaction, but after only a brief amount of discussion, their opinion changed.
“We thought about it and talked about it for a while, and the next morning we said yes, we’ll do it on one condition,” said Jeff. That condition? “We don’t do it for ourselves, but for our hard working people in our stores.”
Thus was born JeffPatChris LLC, the family business that began purchasing stores in 2014, which has now grown to the current 15 stores and about to nearly double with the northwest Washington franchises coming on board in September.
“It’s taken on its own life, it’s crazy,” said Jeff. “We have hundreds of employees, and that’s a lot of people counting on us. This is how they feed their families, get school clothes for the kids, and we take that very seriously.”
Family, and beyond
The family businesses expanded a bit recently when Jeff’s son-in-law, Kevin Hughes, had a change of heart in his career path late into his education.
“Kevin was going to school for sonography (ultrasound), and in his last week — and he was going to graduate among the top of his class — he said this isn’t want he wanted to do; he wanted to join Domino’s,” said Jeff.
Jeff initially said no. He advised his son-in-law to graduate, work in the field he was trained for at least for one year, then reassess his career options and desires.
“He called a week later saying he had dropped out,” said Jeff. “It was not a problem with his skills, he just knew that was not what he wanted to do.”
Kevin had worked for Jeff at the Hoquiam store while Hughes was attending his first two years at Grays Harbor College. Jeff welcomed the two back to Hoquiam; Hughes dug deep and worked hard at the franchise, and in 2015 took over a franchise of his own in Wenatchee.
“Then in 2017 we built another store for him in East Wenatchee,” said Jeff. “Now he, my daughter and two kids are happy and living in a beautiful part of the state.”
Early on, Jeff and Gina wanted to make helping other people a priority in their business ventures. Enter Lolly Kepler.
“She started working for me at my Shelton store when she was 16, then became assistant manager, then manager,” said Jeff. She wanted to enter the nursing school at Grays harbor College, but “missed the final slot by one person. I said come manage my Hoquiam store and decide what you want for a career.”
In her year at the Hoquiam store, she broke records with her management and decided not to reapply for nursing school.
“Right now she is in Sherwood, Ore.; we bought the store there and she is paying us back the price we paid for it,” said Jeff. She had just completed franchisee training in Ann Arbor, Mich., and “is a wonderful person,” added Jeff.
National spotlight
The Farmers’ story did not go unnoticed by Domino’s corporate headquarters. Jeff, Chris and Pat were selected by the company to do a nationwide television commercial, the experience of which was foreign to all three.
“We were selected to do a commercial in 2016,” said Jeff. “Talk about fish out of water; they flew us down to the Sunset Strip and spent $800,000 on this commercial. I about fell over when I heard that. It was really really fun to do it with the two boys, but I would never ever do it again without them.” Why? He said sitting in a makeup chair and having his eyebrows waxed was not his usual cup of tea.
A line in the commercial rang true to the family’s commitment to each other, their franchises and their customers and employers. “I sold my dream house for my franchise,” said Pat. And that was true. Jeff said Pat sold the house he loved in the Wynooche Valley to purchase his Lynnwood store.
The future
In Hoquiam, the future includes an expansion, though not the one Jeff originally anticipated.
“I purchased the car wash (just east of his location on Simpson Avenue) in 2014 with the idea of just creating a parking lot,” he said. “Our carryout business had increased substantially, we were not really just delivery anymore. The more I thought about it I decided to build a free standing inside seating Domino’s store.”
Jeff’s been working with Alan Gozart at Harbor Architects in Aberdeen and believes the design phase has gotten to the point he can make a final design decision.
Stay tuned.
