Business Unusual

Former Food Critic Eats Her Enemies For Lunch; High Flyers Lose in Matrimony But Win on the Runway

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

RHONDA SCHAFFLER, HOST: Ahead on BUSINESS UNUSUAL, she's demure. She's sweet. And she makes millionaires quake in their boots. The former food critic who eats her enemies for lunch.

A couple of high flyers lose in matrimony but win on the runway. And a high school grad attends Harvard for a song. That's all ahead on BUSINESS UNUSUAL.

Welcome to BUSINESS UNUSUAL. I'm Rhonda Schaffler.

Food is life. And food is Ruth Reischl's life. She moved mountains at the "New York Times," becoming its most celebrated and feared restaurant critic. If her palate wasn't pleased, you were toast.

But Reischl broke from the "Times" for an opportunity to put her personality into a magazine. Jan Hopkins reports now on Reischl's latest culinary endeavor as editor-in-chief of "Gourmet."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RUTH REISCHL, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, "GOURMET" MAGAZINE: Cheers.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Cheers.

REISCHL: I'm going to drink this glass of wine with great joy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good.

JAN HOPKINS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): She's effervescent. She's fun-loving. She's demure and petite.

REISCHL: I'll have the salsea (ph), please.

HOPKINS: So why then does the sight of this five-foot-six slender embodiment of civility and good humor strike abject terror into hardheaded businessmen and women everywhere?

REISCHL: Nice to see you.

HOPKINS: Because she is Ruth Reischl, legendary restaurant critic of the "New York Times" and now editor-in-chief of "Gourmet" magazine. In her first year at the Conde Nast publication, Reischl has already made her mark. She has expanded food reviews to cover the entire nation, hired correspondents around the world, and added personalities, not just foods, to grace "Gourmet's" covers.

As for circulation, just ask Gina Sanders, "Gourmet's" beaming publisher.

GINA SANDERS, PUBLISHER, "GOURMET" MAGAZINE: Since Ruth has come on board, we're going to deliver our largest circulation year ever in 60 years. One way this is reflected is the circulation rate base. This is something, of course, that's just a guarantee to advertisers on what will be the achieved level of circulation.

And she's been here just one year. To celebrate her anniversary, we raised the circulation rate base mid-year.

Now traditionally this is something that's done with a launch. You know, to do something mid-year signifies incredible vitality. It doesn't generally happen with a 60-year-old mature property.

HOPKINS: But then again, everything Reischl does seems to break with tradition. She's particularly proud of her book "Tender at the Bone," which spent nine weeks on the "New York Times" bestseller list and sold over 200,000 copies.

A remembrance of her childhood, Reischl tells of her relationship with her mother, how she learned to appreciate good food from a mother who never offered any.

(on camera): You talk about your mother as the Queen of Mold. That's -- no, I mean, it's a great description. But it's not certainly a description of good food.

REISCHL: Well, my mother was a curious cook, an inquisitive cook, an experimental cook, and someone who regularly poisoned people. You know, one of my really early memories is watching her go through the refrigerator, scrape the blue stuff off the top of everything and go, "You know, a little mold never hurt anyone."

HOPKINS (voice-over): Having a mother who was more interested in mold than in meringue, Reischl's influence on the dining tastes of America is astonishing. In fact, Reischl herself is an accomplished cook. And for her culinary lessons, she turned to her parents' memorable housekeeper Mrs. Peavey (ph).

REISCHL: Mrs. Peavey was one of the great mysteries of my early life. She came to work for us. She was this quite patrician woman with sort of silvery hair and quite large.

She was an extraordinary cook, loved to cook. And she was my great consolation.

I would come home from school. And I would go into the kitchen with Mrs. Peavey. HOPKINS: Ruth followed her own passions eating, reading and writing. And in the late '70s while working at her own bistro in Berkeley and writing articles on art history for "New West" magazine, one of her editors came in with an idea.

REISCHL: He just said, "You know, you're a really wonderful writer. And you're a much better cook than our restaurant critic. Maybe we should think about putting this -- have you ever thought about doing restaurant reviews?" And I said, "Why don't you try me?"

HOPKINS: He did. And that first restaurant review turned out to be an Epicurean epiphany for Reischl.

REISCHL: And the editor said, "You were born to do this." And they gave me the job. And then I was a restaurant critic.

HOPKINS: Reischl's reviews proved every bit as tasty as the food she was consuming. Her reputation grew quickly first at "New West" magazine, then on to the "Los Angeles Times" and ultimately to the post powerful newspaper of them all, the "New York Times."

Reischl's clout with restaurant-goers is legendary. Her two-star rating of Un Tarzunie (ph), a small family-owned Upper East Side restaurant forced an extra seating and led to double sales. A day after Reischl's review appeared in the "New York Times," the restaurant's answering machine overloaded with reservation requests and ran out of tape.

But before Reischl even arrived at the "Times," she made a startling discovery.

REISCHL: People in Los Angeles told me, pure people told me that restaurateurs in New York were offering them anything for a picture of me.

HOPKINS: Reischl went on a wig buying binge and from that moment on became known far and wide as the infamous disguised critic. She became Batty (ph), the homely character, Chloe (ph) the blond bombshell, and Brenda (ph), the redhead.

Today, the woman that used to fool New York's most esteemed restaurateurs has removed the wigs and facades and is showing her true colors on the pages of "Gourmet" magazine where readership is over five million, the highest ever.

(on camera): In your role at "Gourmet," what do you hope you'll do for the magazine?

REISCHL: Sell much. I mean, I feel that this is just such an amazing time. Food has become a central concern. It's become a big part of popular culture. And we have this opportunity to make a magazine that really speaks to that group of people.

HOPKINS (voice-over): From humble food beginnings to one of the most respected restaurant critics in the world, Ruth Reischl is on her third course building a gourmet bible. For BUSINESS UNUSUAL, Jan Hopkins, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCHAFFLER: The second installment of Reischl's autobiography entitled "Comfort Me With Apples" is due out in the spring of 2001.

Coming up, their marriage may have crashed. But their business is reaching new heights. That story is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCHAFFLER: Picking up the pieces and making their lives and their business fly again. That's exactly what a Wisconsin couple did after their divorce.

They resurrected a bankrupt aircraft company and helped it soar to new heights.

From Wisconsin, John Dobos (ph) tells us how American Champion Aircraft found its wings.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN DOBOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The tiny village of Rochester, Wisconsin, is about an hour's drive southwest of Milwaukee. It's a quiet, laid back town, but one where there's usually a buzz in the air. The buzz is small airplanes.

JERRY MEHLHAFF, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN CHAMPION AIRCRAFT: There's an exhilaration of freedom, kind of like not being strapped to the Earth more or less.

I started flying right out of high school. I've got over 15,000 hours in light airplanes. And I guess you do what you like to do best. And it's always been my hobby and my love of my life.

DOBOS: Jerry Mehlhaff is a former pipe fitter from Milwaukee who used to manage two small airports and run a flying school. Since 1988, he hasn't only been flying airplanes, but along with his ex-wife Char he's been building them too.

CHAR MEHLHAFF, CFO, AMERICAN CHAMPION AIRCRAFT: I want to tell you that these are the formers. These are the stringers. This is what gives it shape.

DOBOS: Twelve years ago, the Mehlhaffs were still married. And for less than half a million dollars, they bought a 50-year-old company that had been out of business and out of production for almost a decade.

Since 1929, Champion had produced more than 20,000 planes, first in Ohio, then in Wisconsin. But a bad economy drove the company into bankruptcy. And a Texas doctor eventually picked it up for a song, then nothing more than a collection of spare parts stored in tractor trailers in Austin, Texas. J. MEHLHAFF: He was at a meeting in Chicago. And we met him at the restaurant by the state line. And 20 minutes later, we owned the company.

C. MEHLHAFF: It was not turnkey by any stretch of the imagination. There were a lot of miscellaneous parts. And a lot of them were for older models that we weren't going to be building anymore.

DOBOS: Today, American Champion Aircraft employs 80 people who make five models of two-seat airplanes that sell for between $50,000 and $80,000 each. This year, the company is on a pace to put out more than 100 airplanes and do better than $12 million in business.

C. MEHLHAFF: Our preliminary concept was if we're going to do this, the airplanes -- the company has to pay for itself. And now it may take us longer, we're going to go slower. But she's going to have to pay for herself, which she did.

J. MEHLHAFF: Financially, the airplane parts business could carry the note and the expansion of the company. So it really wasn't a gamble on buying the type certificate and hoping to produce airplanes. The intent was servicing the existing fleet.

DOBOS: Within a year of buying the business, the new owners got a big boost from the Federal Aviation Administration, which mandated that the thousands of existing Champion models still flying had to have their seats replaced.

J. MEHLHAFF: It kind of gave us a head start into the manufacturing. Instantaneously by the first of May, we had like nine employees. And by July, we had like 15.

And we were producing like 10 or 15 seats per day to replace the existing ones in the field. And in the course of the next year, we built about 3,000 seats.

C. MEHLHAFF: We did sell an awful lot of seats the first year. So that helped get the wing project going. And once the wing product was going, we then got the airframes and the whole airplane going.

DOBOS: But as the business took off, the Mehlhaffs' marriage took a nosedive. In 1995, Jerry and Char divorced but decided to stay together in business.

C. MEHLHAFF: I think that the stress just overtook us. And we find that we actually work together better now because we're only interfacing for the time of the day that we have. And it's just within that context rather than taking it into the kitchen or the bedroom.

J. MEHLHAFF: Well, my idea of this, you don't want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.

C. MEHLHAFF: It was difficult at first. But we've learned to be business partners and friends. DOBOS: American Champion is still very much a family affair. Jerry and Char's son Jerry, Jr. is the company's chief engineer. And he oversees all new aircraft design. And the whole family loves to fly.

C. MEHLHAFF: An entry-level aircraft. We're on the lower end of the scale. But we're also very versatile in that you can have an 8- or 10-year-old get in and be able to fly our airplanes around, with guidance of course. And then you can also go out and compete in intermediate-level aerobatics with it.

DOBOS (on camera): It will be used, right?

(voice-over): After strapping on a parachute and taking off for a spin or two with Jerry, it's hard to deny that flying is a lot of fun.

J. MEHLHAFF: I guess it's as close as you get to as possibly being a bird. If you want to really know your airplane, it's kind of like an extension of your body. And I think -- I myself, I get the feelings like I can fly like an eagle.

DOBOS: Flying high again. For BUSINESS UNUSUAL, John Dobos, CNN Financial News, Rochester, Wisconsin.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCHAFFLER: Just ahead, how to go to Harvard for nearly nothing.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCHAFFLER: Half the students attending Harvard College receive financial aid, on average $4,000 a year. But Ben Kaplan received nearly $90,000 for his four years at Harvard after winning some two dozen scholarships. He even wrote a book about how to win financial backing.

As Kaplan explains to Myron Kandel, winning scholarships is just a matter of knowing where to look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MYRON KANDEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Benjamin, you've paid almost your entire tuition at Harvard with scholarships. What gave you the idea to try to do that?

BENJAMIN KAPLAN, AUTHOR: Well, it started accidentally, actually. I walked by my high school guidance office, hadn't spent as much time in there as I probably should have, discovered this scholarship application, sent it in. And amazingly, I won the scholarship and ended up winning $17,500 for college for that one scholarship.

So all of a sudden, big lights were flashing. What else is out there? And over the course of my senior year in high school, I applied for about three dozen scholarships and won about two dozen of those worth about $90,000. And now I'm just trying to spread the word that others can do it too.

KANDEL: How successful is this book?

KAPLAN: It's been phenomenal, the response to the book. The first print run sold out in a matter of weeks, and after essentially beginning with no bookstore presence and then people going in and asking for the book and telling others and spreading the word of mouth.

And so it really is. It's been exciting through the story of a small publisher and a kid out of college who now with the tools, and with Internet, and with other means, you can really get the word out about the book and effectively self-publish and challenge from the biggest publisher.

KANDEL: OK, you're one year out of Harvard. And you're an entrepreneur. You started your own company, as you said. But the backbone of the company is your book.

KAPLAN: Right.

KANDEL: And you self-published the book. So you're a publisher as well.

KAPLAN: Right.

KANDEL: What gave you the idea to publish the book you sell?

KAPLAN: Well, my publishing company is Waggle Dancer Books. I first wrote this article for the "New York Times" and started getting a lot of calls from agents and publishers and thought I'd go that route.

Then all of a sudden I thought, maybe there's something more here than just a book but really a concept, which is to help young people through different life milestones with a lot of untraditional experts, a lot of young writers, a lot of people who've experienced things, people who have made just as many mistakes as successes, and try to communicate that to other young people so they can learn from those experiences.

KANDEL: You put up your own money to do it?

KAPLAN: Right.

KANDEL: What are you living on?

KAPLAN: Well, one of the great things about the Internet is it's allowed direct sales of the book directly to customers. What that does is it has actually increased the cash flow. Because bookstores don't pay for three months later, having direct sales to customers, that has actually enabled the funding of the company because we've had those direct sales.

The second thing is one of the byproducts of winning all these scholarships is some money I did have saved for college, I was able to save that and use that to invest in my company. And that's what I've been able to do. And so that's the other exciting part about this.

KANDEL: Where do you want to be 10 years from now?

KAPLAN: Well, I hope writing more and more books. And hopefully, this company -- what we're trying to do is also not only do books, but we're getting into audio products, tapes, CDs, CD-ROMs as well.

So the whole gamut we hope in 10 years, one-stop shopping for students and families. On every life milestone they need, we're going to be there to help.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCHAFFLER: If you would like more information about Ben Kaplan's tips for finding and landing scholarship money, check out his web site at www.winscholarships.com.

Coming up, meet America's oldest worker.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCHAFFLER: Finally, a tight labor market is forcing businesses to look elsewhere for employees. One of the labor pools being tapped, older Americans. And we found one of the oldest, 102 years old, Robert Eisenberg.

Willow Bay has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ready?

ROBERT EISENBERG, CONSULTANT, ZABIN INDUSTRIES: Yes. My other glasses, please.

WILLOW BAY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Like millions of Americans, Robert Eisenberg gets up in the morning and goes to work. So what makes him stand out? He's 102 years old.

EISENBERG: How are you, Steve?

BAY: Twice a week with the help of a live-in assistant, Eisenberg heads to Zabin Industries, the zipper company he co-founded in 1954. He sold the business in 1968.

Eisenberg was 70 years old. And it was time to give retirement a try.

EISENBERG: Played golf, saw different countries. But I got very bored after 10 years. And they asked me to come back as a consultant.

BAY: Zabin's new owners needed his detailed knowledge of the industry. So at the age of 80, the dean of the zipper business returned to work, bringing with him more than 50 years of experience and the desire to be back on the factory floor. (on camera): What do you enjoy most about your work?

EISENBERG: Overlooking everyone and everything. It's a pleasure to me to do it.

BAY: Are there any things you really just don't like about your job?

EISENBERG: I don't like when a person is too lenient with others.

BAY: Too lenient with others?

EISENBERG: That's right.

BAY: You think that happens a fair amount?

EISENBERG: I have a few of them that have to be taught that once in a while, talked to and advised.

BAY (voice-over): Besides watching over Zabin's employees, Eisenberg negotiates with vendors and oversees some longstanding accounts.

(on camera): When you manage them, when you supervise all the people here, what do you expect from them?

EISENBERG: What I do expect is loyalty, honesty, integrity to the firm. President Kennedy once expressed it. "Ask not what the company can do for you, but what you can do for the company." And I think that's true of all life if it's followed correctly.

BAY (voice-over): Alan Faiola, the current owner who asked Eisenberg to return to work 21 years ago, says he's been productive ever since.

ALAN FAIOLA, PRESIDENT, ZABIN INDUSTRIES: Robbie is exceptional, but he is not the exception. There are a lot of older people around who could do a good job. And this really has not much to do with his age. It has to do with the man.

EISENBERG: How are you getting along? All right?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right.

BAY: For BUSINESS UNUSUAL, I'm Willow Bay.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCHAFFLER: And that is BUSINESS UNUSUAL. If you missed any of today's program, you can catch it on the web. Just log on to CNNfn.com and click on BUSINESS UNUSUAL.

I'm Rhonda Schaffler. Thanks for joining us. Goodbye from New York.

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