Real Americans Defending Capitalism: Chef Tim Ziegler
Denver, CO—Capitalism is the best thing that has ever happened to any country in world history. It is responsible for creating America, the greatest country in the world—a country that produces more than any other. The individuals that drive that production are even more remarkable.
I consider myself lucky to even know a fraction of those individuals that drive America—those that believe and choose to participate in the capitalist system. Americans that make this country great by exercising their God given right to firmly grasp the concepts of capitalism.
Not only do these Americans make use of the capitalist system, but they defend it. They stand tall when all around them the clamoring of socialism threatens to destroy their business and their way of life. On television and in the newspaper, Americans claim that capitalism has failed. Yet, these entrepreneurs continue doing business in order to pursue happiness.
Far too many Americans have forgotten the benefits of capitalism. Far too many feel the need to rely on government for a solution to the problem, and far too many people are ignorant of what they can accomplish in America if they simply make the choice that was promised in the Declaration of Independence.
Tim Ziegler has made that choice. He has chosen to grab capitalism and shake it for all its worth, never forgetting the Americans That Risked Everything, and rewarding himself with a life that only capitalism can provide.
Young Lessons
Tim Ziegler was born in Denver, Colorado. He was the fourth of five children whose parents had grown up during The Great Depression. He grew up with the mindset that he was to attend school. In fact, any argument put forth immediately prompted his mother to remind him that he was going to school.
“You are going to school young man,” his mother would tell him. “School is your job.” She would not hear of anything to the contrary. Tim was going to school. It was his job, and he was expected to do his job well. But it wasn’t just school that was ingrained in him. It was hard work and the spirit of entrepreneurship.
“My parents bought a small grocery store near the corner of University and Evans in Denver, Colorado, the summer between my fifth and sixth grade year,” Tim mentions. “My mother had worked there for a couple of years, and she and my dad both worked multiple jobs to get the down payment to justify their Small Business Administration loan. They had a block party with a Dixieland Jazz Band when they burned the mortgage.”
These values were learned, watching his parents become successful through the use of capitalism. He would continue to learn them throughout his growth into a man, and in high school, took a job with a bunch of buddies from school mowing lawns at the University of Denver.
“We worked as a team and did about 20 hours of work but had to spend 40 hours doing it, because the old guy in charge told us we couldn’t finish early,” he proclaimed. “That summer drove me crazy! I figured as long as I’m working I’m going to make money without limitations being imposed on me!” And the next summer he did.
According to Tim, he and one of those same buddies started their own lawn mowing business, working together for two years. “It essentially put a dent in college tuition and expenses,” he explained. “We only worked four days a week so we could fish and backpack on the weekends.”
In fact it was so successful that his parents were furious with him. “My parents were furious on two counts,” he notes. “For one, they couldn’t pay me more than I was making mowing lawns, and I was making so much money that they were upset that I wasn’t working two of the other three days.”
Tim says that his lawn mowing business was profitable because he handled the sales, worked hard, treated his partner fairly, and was honest in his dealings with his customers. The business was successful, largely because Tim was providing a service to his fellow man—an explanation of capitalism offered in Walter Williams’ piece Capitalism And The Common Man.
After high school, Tim joined the United States Marines. It was while he was home on leave during the Christmas of 1981 that he continued to reap the rewards of capitalism by learning the art of selling early.
He was at home with his entire family there. “There were 15 of us in my parent’s house,” he exclaimed. “Denver was hit with a snow storm that dumped 2 feet of snow in 24 hours. To break the monotony, and to make money to pay for presents, my two older brothers, nephew and I hit the streets to shovel snow for cash as we had always done growing up.”
Tim tells us that his older brother approached a house and negotiated a deal to shovel a driveway and sidewalk. They got $6 bucks for shoveling 400 feet of driveway and sidewalk. Well, warmed up from the exertion, Tim promptly announced, “I will handle the selling from now on.”
“Our prices immediately tripled,” he continued, “and we walked away from the evening with several hundred dollars and enough burned energy to survive a few more days in one another’s company.”
Culinary Arts And The School Of Hard Knocks
When he left the Marines, Tim went to Culinary Arts School to become a chef. There, he soon found that his favorite class was a class on business management. It was in that moment that he laid his grasp on capitalism. He was able to put his Marine leadership to work. He was single and driven.
He toiled as a restaurant manager and chef. However, it didn’t work out. “I got stiffed for wages,” he claimed. “So, I decided to open a spice company in Denver that would be like the one in Oregon where I had gone to chef school. I took out a $2,500 personal line of credit and set about getting my Master’s degree from the school of hard knocks.”
The work, according to Tim, was hard, brutal and imaginative. “I had so much to learn that it was ridiculous,” he claimed. But with perseverance and determination, he won the day. He eventually bought out three different partners. Still, success escaped him. “My W-2’s for 1989 and 1990 were $79.00 and $83.00 respectively. I know this because the only W-2’s I got were for my Individual Ready Reserve time with the Marines.”
And after five years, he was able to build up a spice company into a $1 million a year sales. He sold the business and got a job with a new company. He worked for them as a Corporate Chef and sold spices, totaling approximately a million in sales. “When I started, I knew NOTHING about spices. Now I am considered somewhat knowledgeable.”
Tim didn’t stop there. In 1996, he approached Ten Speed Press about producing a spice poster for them to publish. Two years later it was on their website as a published poster. “It was a tremendous learning experience,” he said. “If I had worked in any other country or for a big company, it’s doubtful that I would’ve had the time or freedom to create a product unrelated to my job.”
Over the years, Tim has worked with every type of entrepreneurial business and has been successful with ‘guerilla marketing.’ He contends that one of the bright spots in America is the expectation that an individual can make a difference. They can make a difference by simply using the capitalist system that exists in America today.
He insists that individuals are accountable to other people in business. “Relationships and expertise are keys to sales success and not just pricing,” he claims. “I work in the service industry. Family and start up businesses are the heart of my customer base. Innovation, quality, an overarching demand, and an expectation of service are the basis for business and personal success. Reputations are formed, developed and are lasting assets.”
Working for the large corporation has never been one of Tim’s goals. Nevertheless, he still succeeds. He can still make a contribution in America. He can make a difference for himself, his community and his country.
“I would much rather work with the small local artisan potato chip manufacturer, creating exciting and different seasoning blends for them, than be a food chemist. I was in a restaurant today with a young chef. I was teaching and showing him about spices, because even in such an arcane area of food that is a miniscule part of the American economy, I am giving him a choice. I am able to bring wonderful and innovative products that the big guys in the business don’t even know exist. The chef is excited, and his customers are going to be thrilled with the dishes he prepares with these innovative ingredients.”
Capitalism’s Rewards
Today, Tim assists chefs, restaurants, gourmands and culinary professionals. They learn and then teach their customers about food. This isn’t big business, but it still makes an impact on restaurants. Especially The Fort Restaurant in Morrison, Colorado, a restaurant that has one of many special blends that Tim creates.
“I helped create a blend to commemorate the restaurant’s founder who died a couple of years ago,” he says. “Sam Arnold created a restaurant dedicated to how food was prepared in the old west in the 18th and 19th centuries. He had been integral to my early success as a vendor, and now his daughter owns the restaurant. She has a recipe that I helped create that was inspired by her father’s last restaurant tour. She uses that blend and tells customers not about me – but about her dad.”
Because of capitalism, Tim has made a difference in this restaurant, as well as in the lives of every customer who walks into it. As an individual, he has left an indelible mark on many restaurants, their flavors and the chefs who prepare the food – a mark that never could’ve been achieved through socialism, communism or Marxism. Rather, it is the individual, and his choice that makes capitalism all the more special. At least Tim thinks so.
“American Capitalism is about individuals and choice. We have the freedom as individuals in this country to choose something as simple as where we are going to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. If you’ve ever read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, then you know how important those simple choices can be. Is the choice of choosing which peppercorn the chef is going to use on your steak life altering? Only as an expression of the freedom each of us has to make choices without the direction of a government sanctioned authority.”
Tim notes that he works daily in America’s Melting Pot, something that only capitalism has wrought. “Nowhere else in the world can an individual make so many food choices so inexpensively with such high quality, and from such a diverse international selection of cuisines as in any mid-size city in America. The logistic train that feeds 300 million different people a day, and to have every cuisine imaginable is staggering.”
It is the individual spices, foods, chefs, and restaurants that create a choice for millions of Americans. The competition has spurred a country that creates rewards for Tim, his vendors, and customers across the world.
Service To His Fellow Man
Tim runs the spice division of a $20 million a year specialty food distributor. They sell imported Reggiano Parmigiana and 300 other specialty cheeses. They also sell several hundred olive oils, four pasta lines, a vast line of premier Asian ingredients, olives, desserts, Yuzu orange, black garlic and other fine sushi ingredients.
“In total,” Tim says, summing it up, “there are about 7,000 ingredients that the finest chefs in four states use to make their restaurants special. We bring a little bit of New York, Chicago, Rome, Naples, Paris, The Netherlands, Tokyo, Szechwan, Greece, Turkey, the Spice Islands home here to the Rocky Mountain West.”
According to Tim, the family he works for is an Italian family whose grandparents migrated to the United States three generations ago. “They grew and sold produce in Colorado in the early 20th Century. They have worked hard and created a firm that is the finest of its type between Chicago and San Francisco.”
Tim adds that when chefs from those towns come to Colorado to get away to the Rocky Mountains to start their own little piece of the culinary world they look for us. Just like those Italian grandparents came to serve their fellow man so does Tim. He pursues excellence through capitalism, making him one of the best at what he does. But he doesn’t do it alone. He depends on his employees to help create a piece of heaven right here in Colorado.
“Our employees and my employees over the years are what make entrepreneurs successful,” he claims. “No one person can have all of the skills necessary to make a business successful. The most successful business start-ups are the ones that seek employees better than the ownership group and keep them on the payroll – learning from those employees all of the time.”
He insists that profit sharing, 401k’s, fair compensation, health and dental insurance, and solid business relationships are what make for long-lasting companies. He affirms that his employees like meaningful and rewarding work, and they like it when their ideas are implemented. They like that they make a difference, and they can only make an impact in America.
For Tim, his employees are the business to his customers. Their happiness, success and longevity, he claims, communicate more than most advertising campaigns to our customers about our business. But he also knows that in today’s society, employees don’t understand the true premise of capitalism, its rewards and their ability to make a difference.
“One of the constant struggles of owning a small business,” he states, “is making the employees understand that their paycheck does not come from the business owner’s largesse. The money they are paid comes from the profit of selling customers product. Once they understand that when waste, neglect, spoilage, breakage all go down and profitability goes up, then they share in that profit.”
Tim understands that with the display of Congressional hearings on AIG, Merrill Lynch and other corporate entities, it is far too easy to point the finger at business owners and label them an evil entity. He also knows that the freedom to choose, and the freedom to pursue happiness needs to be approached fundamentally once again—that as a whole, America must be educated once again in the realities of economics.
A Simple Approach
“America is the greatest country the world has ever known,” he declares. “Why? Because it is based upon a system that understands and acts upon basic human nature, rather than socialism, which is in conflict with human nature. People want what’s best for themselves, their families and their business. Customers give them money because they are operating in their own self interest. If the customer can generate a profit from working with us, they will buy from us, and if not, then they’ll buy from someone else. Those choices and the competition that those choices engender are what make Americans successful.”
He ascertains that socialism takes a collective approach, harming the individual more than through a system of capitalism. Capitalism isn’t easy. It rewards those that work, and it doesn’t reward those that do not; nevertheless, it gives every individual the opportunity.
In his summation of capitalism, Tim has evoked a supply side economics argument, reminding us that if his customers can profit from them, then they’ll buy from him. If they can’t, they’ll buy from someone else. Therefore, Tim must produce a product at a price his customers are willing to pay. The price they are willing to pay is the price that will make them the largest profit.
In order to offer the price that will make his customers buy from him, he must keep his costs low. Say for example, Tim offers tarragon at $2.25 per jar. He currently has three customers that are willing to pay that price, but one of his customers says they’ve found Company Z that can offer them tarragon at $2.00 per jar. Tim finds himself in a position where he must lose money in order to offer tarragon at that price. So, he loses his customer. Upon losing that customer, Tim finds he has to cut costs even more, and eliminates one employee’s job.
Suddenly, the corporate tax rate is cut from 40% to 30%. Now, Tim finds that he has more disposable income to reinvest back into the business. He reinvests that money into the business and begins producing tarragon himself. He quickly learns he can offer tarragon at $1.90 per jar. At that price, Tim picks up ten more customers that are willing to pay that price. As more customers offer him business, the business expands. As the business expands, Tim has to hire five more employees to meet the demand. Soon, Tim opens up two more lines, hiring twenty-five more employees. Profits begin to roll in, and so do the rewards of capitalism.
Tim Ziegler is successful because of capitalism. He has firmly grasped those principles, and staunchly defends capitalism today. For Tim knows he could never have been able to accomplish his goals in Cuba. So thank you, Tim Ziegler —thank you for persevering in the greatest country in the world, and thank you for defending capitalism.
