We have also specified in our architectural designs the utilization of high-efficiency HVAC units in all new restaurant construction and recently launched a companywide replacement program in existing facilities. We are also now utilizing T8 and T5 fluorescent bulbs versus traditional incandescent lighting. This has reduced our restaurant lighting costs by more than 25 percent.

Explain xeriscaping. In the west, we do not get a whole lot of water. Xeriscaping is utilizing plants and landscaping products and materials that use triple systems to water. It is managing not just water, but it is also protecting the environment, doing the kinds of things that look good but also save water.

It is a mixture of things, and the triple systems enable the water to actually go to the plant root as opposed to evaporating or being taken off by the wind. It is not rocks around the sides. It really is nice landscaping.

On a personal level, why do you involve yourself in charitable works? Somebody opened doors for me, and I need to do the same. I am in very nontraditional fields, clearly.

My parents were very active in involving us in doing things beyond school and beyond church. You could be a member of something to help others, but you needed to also assume leadership positions because anybody can be a member.

My younger brother and I started this little landscape (I do not like to say business) where we would offer around the neighborhood to pull weeds, mow the lawn, and do all kinds of things. It was not about our bank account. The money we raised was given to support other kids.

It is part of my family’s culture, and certainly part of our business culture, that a power measure does not necessarily mean the largest or whatever. It is also, “What do we do in our own community?”

Who are some of the companies out there that you admire, other than YUM!, of course? Apple is one of the concepts or brands I really admire.

Why is that? I have great respect for that company because it can create products, especially ones that are elegant, relatively easy to use, and so cool that customers are happy to line up overnight to buy them and pay a premium for doing that. Leveraging the power and the marketing of these brands is something Apple has mastered over the years and people are trying to replicate. They continue to introduce or build upon their existing products, staying true to who they are and what they communicate, but keeping up with customer technology trends in an ever-changing, not just domestic, but international, market.

What about in the foodservice world? Well I have a lot of respect for all foodservice and quick-service brands. This is a difficult business, highly competitive. But I think about McDonald’s and things they have done over the years—providing different menu items and doing it very well: the multiple points of distribution, starting and developing the drive-thru, developing and profiting from their breakfast daypart. That all added up to a very positive, not only expansion, but growth structure and also enabled them to grow not just domestically but internationally. In that regard they are consistent, and a leader, as opposed to a player.

You mentioned people who opened doors for you. Was there anyone in particular in the foodservice community who acted as a guide for you? There were people who were established in Taco Bell for many years, the original franchisees, but you know, I have learned as much from single operators as multioperators. I cannot point to one individual specifically.

I do not like to give advice, which does not mean I do not take it. But if I had listened to conventional advice or conventional wisdom, I certainly would have never been able to become a commercial contractor, because women just did not do those things. Or, you know, an owner of a major league baseball team. And quick-service, who would have thought?

There are many, many people who were with Taco Bell when it first started who enabled the system to grow to the point where it is now, who opened the door for the Alvarado Co. to have multistate operations. And every one of them contributed, so I cannot name them. But I do owe them a debt of gratitude. And you can put KFC in that same paragraph, Pizza Hut, Long John’s. I am not the developer of that. It is the people who were franchisees and corporate who developed the brands.

If you had to characterize your day, how much is spent on the foodservice side versus the construction side of your businesses? They are related, and I would say it is equally divided.