We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Scott Hagg. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Scott below.
Scott, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?
I got my work ethic from my parents. My father was working in a paint factory when my sisters and i were young and living in Detroit, Michigan. Average life span after retirement of the factory was 2 years from breathing in all the fumes from the paint. My parents had the opportunity to open our own pizza restaurants outside of Cleveland, Ohio, so they took a chance. I saw 2 people build a tremendous family business by working tirelessly to establish our business and make it successful. After 18 months, we were building our third location, which would up going to me because of a failed partnership. While in high school i was managing this location a few nights a week. After graduating high school, i began managing full time and also going to community college to take business courses. This path i chose was not forced on me but i chose to follow in the footsteps of my idols and the people that made me who i am today.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I am proud to say that i am owner of UAFOODS, which is a Food and Beverage franchise company based in Amherst, Ohio. My most successful and biggest brand is Arabica coffee house, which started in 1976. We have locations in 8 countries and more on the way. Arabica was only in Cleveland, Ohio when i bought the company but i made it International with over 300 International locations around the world. We will be opening in November in Lahore, Pakistan.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Firstly, love what you do. If you love what you do, work is not work and learning is a natural thing. Work hard and stick to your ethics. If you do all you can do and never lead another astray, you can never be blamed for not doing your job.
Learn. Never stop evolving and learning new ideas about what you do. Get ideas from other people and take the good and implement into your plans.
A quote that i live by, “if your the smartest person in the room, your in the wrong room”
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
Always looking to work with “good people”. My meaning of good people is someone or group of people that have the same moral values and ethics as we do at UAFOODS. We sell franchises around the world, we also sell food products and love to partner with other restaurants or groups of restaurants to explore opportunities to help each other. They key words are making sure everyone wins. I will always listen to someone who has an idea, you never know what could happen.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.uafcorp.com
- Linkedin: Scott Hagg
- Other: scott@uafcorp.com
