Most Admired Kingdom Company #5: Little Texas :: Romania
The Story of Little Texas is an incredible story of someone who stepped out and chased the idea of living a life on mission. Rather than re-invent the wheel and attempt to tell the story again, I've included an excerpt of an article that feature Little Texas in the New York Times a little over a year ago."After starting the first secondhand clothing store in Romania's second largest city, Jerri Little was struck with the idea of starting a restaurant. The most popular TV show in Romania after the fall of the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, was the hit show "Dallas." So it only made sense that Jerri and his wife decided to do a Texas theme, make it a Tex-Mex restaurant.
In 1997 Little Texas, became by all reliable accounts the most popular and authentic, not to mention only, Tex-Mex restaurant in northeastern Romania. As diners in the John Wayne dining room eat their enchiladas and homemade tortillas, they can study a passage on the wall from the 20th Psalm: "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God."The couple built a hotel above the restaurant, for Romanian business travelers, with 32 rooms.
Some of the restaurant's profit this year will be put back into expanding the business, but the rest will go to local aid and ministry projects, Mr. Little said. These have included opening a kindergarten and day-care center in one of Iasi's poorest neighborhoods. Soon, Mr. Little and his associates plan to open the first dental clinic in a town in Moldova, several hours from Iasi.
Mr. Little also helped some Romanian friends start a housing company that gives 25 percent of its profit to evangelical ministries. "If I'm going to be involved," he said, "there's going to have to be a significant win for the ministry right off the top."
To read the full article click on this link: http://www.businessasmissionnetwork.com/2006/05/business-as-mission-in-motion-ec-group.html
To learn more about the restaurant or hotel on their website, visit http://littletexas.org/
Labels: 25 Most Admired Kingdom Companies 2007, Case Studies
