Doran was born near Cleveland but moved to Dayton in 1976.
“We moved here from Homestead, Florida,” Doran said. “I was mad about it because I loved Florida.”
Doran lived in south Florida for about four years and had no reason to believe he wouldn’t stay in there through high school. By that time, he was an avid baseball player and practicing for the varsity team. Then his dad dropped the ball that the family was moving to Ohio.
“When we moved to Dayton, I had to start from scratch,” Doran said. “I decided to try out for baseball, but I got cut.”
Doran spent his junior and senior years at Wayne High School and maintained good grades despite having to adjust to his new life. After graduating from Wayne, he decided to go to the University of Dayton.
“I’m glad I did because it was a wonderful experience (at UD),” Doran said. “At that point I was thinking about going to law school.”
Majoring in political science and economics, Doran was accepted into law school but then the realization of the financial ramifications hit him.
“I was already in debt,” he said. “So I decided to go to work.”
Doran had two job offers. One was to work at the state house in Columbus and the other – working for a restaurant company called GZK Inc. – owners of Arby’s at the time. GZK offered him $4,000 more than the state house was offering.
“I lived at home through college but then I was on my own,” Doran said. “Money became very important.”
Besides the greater salary, Doran’s family, friends and girlfriend were all in the Dayton area. So he stayed and started working in one of GZK’s other branded restaurants – Burger Chef.
“It was clear then that Burger Chef was a dying brand,” Doran said. “I took over the Arby’s near UD and it was really a gift.”
As a recent UD graduate, Doran was still connected to the university and the surrounding community. This, coupled with his innate skill at building national brands, led to the first million-dollar location for GZK.
“It wasn’t rocket science that made me successful,” Doran said. “I talked some young girls into working with me at lunchtime. They were very friendly and attractive and that goes a long way. It just took off.”
As Doran moved up the ranks in GZK, he became an executive manager, training manager and then area supervisor. GZK also owned Lee’s Famous Recipe, a chicken restaurant that was started in Lima by Lee Cummings, a nephew of KFC founder Harlan Sanders.
At the time, there were 24 Lee’s restaurants in Dayton. But Doran recognized that Lee’s was going the way of Burger Chef.
“GZK sold Lee’s in 2014 and there were just 12 stores still open,” Doran said. “They decided to put their time and energy in Arby’s.”
Doran’s company, Far Hills Development, LLC, bought the rights to Lee’s. He had a goal of reestablishing the Lee’s brand in Dayton and started by focusing on the stores that had been neglected over the years. Over the past decade, Doran has reinvested every penny of his profits from the business back into the restaurants, including repaving parking lots, painting buildings and updating lighting and putting in computer systems.
Today, Lee’s faces competition from many more chicken restaurants than just Kentucky Fried Chicken. Doran needed to figure out how to make his brand stand out among Popeyes, Raising Cane’s and Chik-fil-A.
“Chicken is huge,” Doran said. “We exist because of what we’ve been able to cultivate in our local market as Dayton’s original chicken restaurant.”
Close to Doran’s heart is the Huber Heights local school district, especially with two grown sons who were Wayne graduates. He is also active on the local Rotary and serves on the YMCA advisory board.
“I started out by working with the Wayne concession stands and selling our chicken strips at games,” Doran said. “We set up a program so that the school could keep the profits, and we sold them to them at our cost.”
Today Doran and his team own 12 Lee’s Famous Recipe restaurants in Dayton. In 2020, a private equity group purchased the Lee’s brand, and they are working on regrowth.
Doran continues his commitment to the local community by sponsoring high school teams and fostering a love of sports in the community. He is also a frequent host of fundraisers and volunteers regularly for local charities.
“Honestly it’s challenging,” Doran said. “You don’t have to look very far to see restaurants closing all over the place. The whole dynamic of the business changed post COVID-19. We all pay our employees about the same, so the differentiator comes at the store-level management team. We work hard to focus on the three values of customers, crews and communities.”
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