And for hamburger mogul La-Van Hawkins it means giving away more than a million dollars to worthy causes each year. "I think the old Black guard had the attitude `I got mine, so you get yours,'" says Hawkins, whose company, UrbanCityFoods, owns 43 Burger Kings, which are expected to ring up more than $200 million in sales next year. "But the new Black millionaires understand that we have a fiduciary responsibility to give back."
By William Bunch
Philly.com
The story of La-Van Hawkins seems too good to be true: A former gang leader from Chicago's worst housing project kicks a $1,000-a-week cocaine habit and puts his swagger to work in the fast-food industry, becoming a multimillionaire and one of America's best-known black capitalists.
With the girth of an offensive lineman, Hawkins is a literally larger-than-life figure whose posh homes in Atlanta and Detroit, private jet and fund-raising work for presidential hopeful Al Sharpton won him glowing profiles, like one that appeared in Ebony last year.
"Fresh crab cakes and carved beef tenderloins were washed down by $200-a-bottle Cristal champagne," the magazine wrote of a fund-raising event for Sharpton that Hawkins hosted in 2003 at his hilltop Atlanta mansion. "Hawkins worked the crowd, at times talking business and world politics with guests, at other times, seeming to 'shake down' guests for donations."
Even before Hawkins was indicted yesterday on fraud and perjury charges, there were increasing signs that the La-Van Hawkins story actually was too good to be true.
In building a fast-food empire that's included Burger King, Pizza Hut and Checkers Drive-In franchises across the country, Hawkins also has left a growing trail of lawsuits. Since fall 2001, companies claiming that Hawkins owed them money have won more than $1 million in judgments against him.
"La-Van Hawkins will vigorously defend himself against these allegations, and he will prevail," Hawkins' spokesman, David Payne, said yesterday.
The indictment accuses Hawkins of working with power attorney Ronald A. White and then-city treasurer Corey Kemp to defraud a businessman in a deal to buy Church's Fried Chicken franchises.
It also accuses him of lying to the grand jury, and describes how he flew with White and Kemp to the 2003 Super Bowl and helped White funnel $5,000 to the city official. If convicted, Hawkins, 46, faces a maximum sentence of 125 years in prison and a $1.75 million fine.
Hawkins is head of Detroit-based Hawkins Food Group LLC, which owns Pizza Huts in Michigan, Blockbuster video stores and a Detroit upscale restaurant, Sweet Georgia Brown. He claims annual revenues of some $300 million.
The ties between Hawkins and White go all the way back to the mid-1990s, when the two men incorporated a food company called Philadelphia Connection Inc. Hawkins was owner of some Checkers franchises in the area at the time.
According to grand jury testimony released yesterday, Hawkins testified that once in 2002 White asked him to borrow $40,000, and so he lent it to him, no questions asked. Pointedly reminding the grand jury "that I'm a multimillionaire," Hawkins testified the money came "out of a drawer."
Given Hawkins' hardscrabble story, which started in Chicago's Cabrini-Green housing project, it may take more than an indictment to count him out.
"The one thing that has helped me is that I have an MBA and Ph.D. in streetology," Hawkins told Ebony. "It certainly has allowed me to take it to the next level. I will not be denied."
