LETTER FROM THE EDITOR n
FAMILY BUSINESSES ARE VITAL
TO THE CAPITAL REGION AND STATE
PHOTO: TERENCE DUFFY
M
y first real job — one with a paycheck with taxes deducted
— was at the Crab Claw in Ocean City, Maryland. It was
a summer job busing tables, and I most likely landed it
because my father, a prominent architect, was acquainted with
Mr. Higgins (we never called him Ed, of course, but some could
be overheard calling him Old Man Higgins, though he was
barely 40 at the time).
One of my favorite memories about that job was the fam-
ily that owned it (certainly not the crab-seasoning smell that
couldn’t be washed away). Ed and his wife Barbara managed
the place, and all four of their kids worked there that summer.
In a sense, the Higgins had many more kids — they treated all
their young employees like family, asked about our parents and
siblings, how we were doing in school, what our goals were.
Ed and Barbara have passed away, but the family business
continues, albeit under a different name. One of the sons, Bob-
by, now owns the two Higgins Crab House locations in Ocean
City, with a combined seating of about 1,000, he says. “This has
been a very busy summer,” Higgins says.
That job was the first of many at family-owned restaurants
that helped me pay my way through college. My first job after
graduating from college was for a family-owned newspaper in
my hometown, and for many of my 33 years at The Sacramento
Bee, it was owned by the McClatchy family — from James in
1857 to C.K., who as CEO took the company public in 1988.
It’s likely we’ve all either worked for or even owned a fam-
ily business. According to the Family Business Association of
California, there are 1.4 million family-owned businesses in the
state, employing nearly 7 million people. The nonprofit organi-
zation says family businesses in the U.S. generate 57 percent of
the nation’s gross domestic product, employ 63 percent of the
workforce and create 75 percent of new jobs.
Despite the number of family businesses, the FBA says there
isn’t a standard definition across state and local jurisdictions,
which leaves policymakers without accurate data when imple-
menting policy issues such as estate succession, an important
consideration for family-owned businesses.
“Family businesses are important to California,” says Rob-
ert Rivinius, the executive director of FBA, whose board of
directors includes prominent business owners in this region
(Ken Monroe of Holt of California, Dave Lucchetti of Pacific
Coast Building Products, Grant Deary of Nor-Cal Beverage and
Carol Burger of Burger Rehabilitation, among others). “We want
family businesses to be recognized by the state.”
Rivinius, whose organization has been advocating for fam-
ily businesses at the state Capitol for seven years, says only 30
percent of family businesses survive into the second genera-
tion, 15 percent into the third and fewer than 5 percent into the
fourth and beyond.
One bill sponsored by FBA is SB 483, which was carried
by state Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, and would define
family owned as:
• privately held by one individual or two or more related
individuals, or a partnership of entities owned by related
individuals
• headquartered in California
• in operation for 10 or more years
• one that demonstrates an intent to continuously operate as
a family-owned business in the future
The bill passed in the Senate on May 2 on a unanimous
vote, and was sent to the Assembly, where it was assigned to
the Committee on Business and Professions. It stalled there,
however, making it a two-year bill, meaning Pan will take it up
again when the Legislature reconvenes in January for the sec-
ond year of the two-year session.
We agree with Rivinius about the importance of family-
owned businesses. Comstock’s has reported extensively on
family-owned businesses since its inception in 1989, and we
continue that tradition with this issue of the magazine. We be-
gin planning months in advance, and the decision about which
of the Capital Region’s thousands of family-owned businesses
to feature is difficult. Our goal is to bring diversity to our cover-
age in the type and size of businesses.
After much discussion among our editors, we decided to
feature these six family-owned businesses: Dimple Records, Z
Specialty Food, Sacramento River Cats, Bardis Homes, Huston
Textiles Company and Yolanda's Tamales. We’re also featuring
three family businesses in our Taste column, and one in our In
the Making photo feature.
We hope you enjoy these stories as much as we enjoyed
meeting these families and reporting and writing about their
livelihoods and how they are building for the next generation.
Tom Couzens
Executive Editor
October 2019 | comstocksmag.com
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