>> Yeah, my name is Jeff Owens.
And I'm a 1985 graduate of Penn
State in the accounting program.
I'm the chief financial officer for
Clyde's Restaurant group in Washington DC.
Clyde's was started as a small
saloon in 1963 in Georgetown
and so we're a local company that's
been around for the last 50 years.
We now have 14 locations.
They're located in DC, Maryland and Virginia.
And it's a great private company and
it's been a real fun time for me.
I've been there for 17 years.
With a company, you know, the size
of Clyde's and it's kind of a group
where it is a small corporate staff.
There's only about a dozen
of us in the corporate office
and it's a 130 million dollar company.
So, you know, as CFO you
kind of wear a lot of hats.
You get involved in a lot
of things and, you know,
it's one of the things I like about the job.
But, you know, the restaurant business
is the kind of business where you kind
of get instant feedback on the job you're doing.
I mean, you don't have to wait until the end
of the year to find out how you're doing.
I mean, your guests are going to let you know
every day and, you know, you can try new things
and measure the success and it's, you know,
it's kind of an instant gratification
type of business.
It really fluctuates with what's going
on in the company and also with our year.
I mean, if it's during the budget season,
you know, which is kind of November,
December time frame, when we're doing all
our budget work for the following year,
there's a big demand and a lot of
meetings and a lot of deadlines to be made.
We have other deadlines that come up
with the accounting function, you know,
with our annual audits and, you know,
just the different cycles of what goes on.
So it -- and if we're building a new restaurant,
that's a really big demand on everyone
to put the attention to kind of
get the new place up and running.