America's Youngest Board Member?
from Winter 1998
by Nancy Beth Jackson
When Jason Starkman turned 13, he started busing tables in a California deli. Eight years later, when Jerry’s Famous Deli of Studio City went public, he joined the board. Today, he heads up the company’s expansion in Florida, where Jerry’s bought two Miami Beach landmarks—Wolfie Cohen’s Rascal House restaurant and Epicure Market—and opened another Wolfie’s in Boca Raton. At 24, Jason may be the youngest director of a publicly held American corporation.
No rags-to-riches success story, this. It’s all in the family. Jason’s dad, Isaac, ran that deli where Jason first worked and is chairman and chief executive of the chain. Its Nasdaq ticker symbol: DELI. At 27, Jason’s brother, Guy, is also a director. Three outsiders complete the board, which, incidentally, is now buying back stock.
After Isaac Starkman opened the original Jerry’s in 1978, Jason hung out with his dad between arcade games in the bowling alley behind the restaurant. He wasn’t long for the life of busboy, and soon he was taking orders, filling in behind the counter, and manning the cash register. Too busy to go to college, Jason computerized the restaurant immediately after graduating from high school and told his dad how to keep books electronically.
“I’ve felt I owed my life to my father. This is a way to repay him,” says the younger Starkman, who learned his computer skills in summer camp. “I’m very lucky. People in my generation go to college because they want to go their own way, but I think the smartest thing you can do is never walk away from something started. My father started a family business and I chose to go with it.”
His dad envisions the Florida operation as the company’s center of national growth. “By next year, we hope to see approximately 40% to 45% of our revenues coming from Florida,” says Isaac Starkman. The company earned $293,000 in the first six months of 1998, on revenues of $30 million.
Jerry’s is a leading consolidator of independent delis, and in 1998, for the second year in a row, the Los Angeles Business Journal ranked the chain as having six of the 25 highest-grossing restaurants in Los Angeles County. In addition to Jerry’s Famous, the chain also owns Solley’s Delicatessen and Bakery in Southern California.
Florida will soon be giving California a run for its money. “I work 24 hours-a-day and I don’t take days off,” Jason says. When he talks of the future, it is in terms of “the next store, the next store after that, and the next store after that.”
There’s no generation gap in the Starkman family, or on the Jerry’s Famous board. Says the young director: “I live my life only trusting people over 30.” Of course, he does make exceptions: his brother, who handles California operations—and his girlfriend, who’s 18.
