Family Business Quotes

“Just because someone is the heir to a throne or company does not mean they are the best fit for the job. Entrusting someone who can lead, has the respect of the people and company, and a vision to where to take the company is more important than bloodline. That is why family companies establish a Board or hire someone outside to run the company. It is what is best for the company. Because as history shows with insane rulers like Nero and Caligula, bloodline may not always be best for the country, company, or civilization." - Kailin Gow, on Choosing a Successor, Leadership”
― Kailin Gow

“The book of Jonah becomes an embarrassing and public reading of your family business.”
― Michael Ben Zehabe, A Commentary on Jonah

“Starting a business with brother either ends business or ends brotherhood.”
― Amit Kalantri

“It is halfway true that if you are involved in a family coffeehouse you don't have a life.”
― Robin McKinley, Sunshine

“Benny Imura couldn't hold a job, so he took to killing.
It was the family business. He barely liked his family-and by family he meant his older brother, Tom-and he definitely didn't like the idea of "business". Or work. The only part of the deal that sounded like it might be fun was the actual killing.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Rot & Ruin

“No matter how big a company is, one has to always look at business basics.”
― Tarun Sharma

“Two nights after the Chaworth ball, Gabriel practiced at the billiards table in the private apartments above Jenner's. The luxurious rooms, which had once been occupied by his parents in the earlier days of their marriage, were now reserved for the convenience of the Challon family. Raphael, one of his younger brothers, usually lived at the club, but at the moment was on an overseas trip to America. He'd gone to source and purchase a large quantity of dressed pine timber on behalf of a Challon-owned railway construction company. American pine, for its toughness and elasticity, was used as transom ties for railways, and it was in high demand now that native British timber was in scarce supply.
The club wasn't the same without Raphael's carefree presence, but spending time alone here was better than the well-ordered quietness of his terrace at Queen's Gate. Gabriel relished the comfortably masculine atmosphere, spiced with scents of expensive liquor, pipe smoke, oiled Morocco leather upholstery, and the acrid pungency of green baize cloth. The fragrance never failed to remind him of the occasions in his youth when he had accompanied his father to the club.
For years, the duke had gone almost weekly to Jenner's to meet with managers and look over the account ledgers. His wife Evie had inherited it from her father, Ivo Jenner, a former professional boxer. The club was an inexhaustible financial engine, its vast profits having enabled the duke to improve his agricultural estates and properties, and accumulate a sprawling empire of investments. Gaming was against the law, of course, but half of Parliament were members of Jenner's, which had made it virtually exempt from prosecution.
Visiting Jenner's with his father had been exciting for a sheltered boy. There had always been new things to see and learn, and the men Gabriel had encountered were very different from the respectable servants and tenants on the estate. The patrons and staff at the club had used coarse language and told bawdy jokes, and taught him card tricks and flourishes. Sometimes Gabriel had perched on a tall stool at a circular hazard table to watch high-stakes play, with his father's arm draped casually across his shoulders. Tucked safely against the duke's side, Gabriel had seen men win or lose entire fortunes in a single night, all on the tumble of dice.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Devil in Spring

“Saturday is birthday cake day.
During the week, the panadería is all strong coffee and pan dulce. But on weekends, it's sprinkle cookies and pink cake. By ten or eleven this morning, we'll get the first rush of mothers picking up yellow boxes in between buying balloons and paper streamers.
In the back kitchen, my father hums along with the radio as he shapes the pastry rounds of ojos de buey, the centers giving off the smell of orange and coconut. It may be so early the birds haven't even started up yet, but with enough of my mother's coffee and Mariachi Los Camperos, my father is as awake as if it were afternoon.
While he fills the bakery cases, my mother does the delicate work of hollowing out the piñata cakes, and when her back is turned, I rake my fingers through the sprinkle canisters. During open hours, most of my work is filling bakery boxes and ringing up customers (when it's busy) or washing dishes and windexing the glass cases (when it's not). But on birthday cake days, we're busy enough that I get to slide sheet cakes from the oven and cover them in pink frosting and tiny round nonpareils, like they're giant circus-animal cookies. I get to press hundreds-and-thousands into the galletas de grajea, the round, rainbow-sprinkle-covered cookies that were my favorite when I was five.
My mother finishes hollowing two cake halves, fills them with candy- green, yellow, and pink this time- and puts them back together. Her piñatas are half our Saturday cake orders, both birthday girls and grandfathers delighting at the moment of seeing M&M's or gummy worms spill out. She covers them with sugar-paste ruffles or coconut to look like the tiny paper flags on a piñata, or frosting and a million rainbow sprinkles.”
― Anna-Marie McLemore, Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food & Love

“My father doesn't ask why I'm in the back after the first morning rush, making green and purple sugar paste for pan dulce. He's working on a batch of unicorn conchas, his latest stroke of genius, pan dulce covered with shells of pink, purple, and blue sugar that sell out every weekend.”
― Anna-Marie McLemore, Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food & Love

“I’m allowed to drive for the family business,” he explains.

“Which is what—a funeral parlor? You almost killed me.”
― Gordon Korman, The Unteachables

“... we can say that it takes generations for a firm to understand
value before they can adapt to it.”
― Anas O Hamshari B Sc, Bringing the World of Super Luxury to Kuwait: 2014 Dissertation by Anas O. H. Hamshari, from the European School of Economics in Florence, Italy

“Mom, I think you've done enough experimenting. All of these batches have been delicious."
I dip the other, unbitten end into a small dish of sweet chili sauce.
"You never know what people will want," she says. "Some like it with pork, some like it with chicken, some like it with shrimp."
Our post-work evening has been spent testing out different batches of lumpia for the upcoming Maui Food Festival. Ever since I told her we'd be competing to keep our spot on Makena Road, she's been in a food-prepping frenzy. Every night after work for the past week she's spent hours testing out new dishes, tweaking ingredients to get the flavors just right. Yesterday it was adjusting the level of fish sauce in the pansit, then attempting to perfect the ratio of rice noodle to meat and vegetables.”
― Sarah Smith, Simmer Down

“Winnie and Big Leo Chao were serving scallion pancakes decades before you could find them outside of a home kitchen. Leo, thirty-five years ago, winning his first poker game against the owners of a local poultry farm, exchanged his chips for birds that Winnie transformed into the shining, chestnut-colored duck dishes of far-off cities. Dear Winnie, rolling out her bing the homemade way, two pats of dough together with a seal of oil in between, letting them rise to a steaming bubble in the piping pan. Leo, bargaining for hard-to-get ingredients; Winnie subbing wax beans for yard-long beans, plus home-growing the garlic greens, chives, and hot peppers you used to never find in Haven. Their garden giving off a glorious smell.”
― Lan Samantha Chang, The Family Chao

“We dine in Gion---the geisha district, Kyoto's heart and spiritual center. There are rickety teahouses, master sword makers, and women dressed in kimonos. The restaurant is by invitation only and seats seven, but the chef prefers to keep the guest count under five. His name is Komura, and like the bamboo farmer Shirasu and his son, his two daughters assist him. The sisters light candles in bronze holders and place them around the room. The restaurant is a converted home, the walls a deep ebony stained from years of smoke from the open hearth----it's called kurobikari, black luster. It's a hidden gem nestled between a pachinko parlor and an antiques shop.
The table we kneel at is made of thick wood, its surface weathered, worn, and polished, honed by years of hands and plates and cups of tea.”
― Emiko Jean, Tokyo Ever After

“If you're not already using this plan, after reading the book, you will!”
― Terrance Amen, FBC: Family Business Circle: Creating Generational Wealth, Using the Money You're Already Spending