{"id":245238,"date":"2017-01-27T06:00:36","date_gmt":"2017-01-26T20:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=245238"},"modified":"2017-01-27T06:00:36","modified_gmt":"2017-01-26T20:00:36","slug":"growing-poor-biggest-motivation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/growing-poor-biggest-motivation\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Growing up poor was biggest motivation\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
McDonald\u2019s Saipan and Guam owner Jose \u201cJoe\u201d C. Ayuyu shows off the cover of Guam Business Magazine, which featured him as its Executive of the Year. (Mark Rabago)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Indeed, McDonald\u2019s Saipan and Guam owner Jose \u201cJoe\u201d C. Ayuyu has come a long way. <\/p>\n

Now the proud owner of both McDonald\u2019s franchises on Saipan and Guam, Ayuyu wasn\u2019t born with a silver spoon in his mouth. In fact, the oldest of 12 children of Esteban and Juanita grew up poor.<\/p>\n

Rather than forget the struggles he and his siblings went through during their formative years in Chalan Kanoa, the 2016 Guam Business Magazine\u2019s Executive of the Year embraced it.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrowing up, I would ask my parents for something. I would say, \u2018Can I have money to watch a movie or buy candy?\u2019 and they would always say, \u2018We have no money.\u2019 I came from a very poor family. It was a struggle just to make ends meet,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

When it was time to go to the University of Hawaii on a scholarship, Ayuyu said his father, a mechanic, couldn\u2019t even give him pocket money, only saying, \u201cGood luck and you have to pay for your own education.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want to go through that again. I also don\u2019t want my kids to go through what I went through, which was growing up poor. What I am now has a lot to do with my upbringing and this has been my driving force to become successful.\u201d <\/p>\n

The 64-year-old Ayuyu, who is the franchise owner of two McDonald\u2019s stores on Saipan, made news when he acquired six McDonald\u2019s restaurants in Guam last year. It\u2019s probably the main reason why Guam Business magazine chose him to be this year\u2019s awardee.<\/p>\n

Winning the award was, however, farthest from his mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t expecting it\u2026I was surprised after I was nominated. I always thought my chances of winning were very slim. I still have to thank them for recognizing the contributions I made in business.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ayuyu said everyone was surprised when a businessman from Saipan managed to purchase six Golden Arches restaurants in the U.S. territory from the McDonald\u2019s Corp. of Chicago. <\/p>\n

\u201cI bought the six McDonald\u2019s in Guam that was owned by McDonald\u2019s Corp. for the past 45 years. A lot of people were under the impression that somebody in Guam owned the franchise on the island,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Acquiring the McDonald\u2019s stores in Guam had been a long-cherished dream.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor many, many years I\u2019ve been bugging the corporation to buy them out. They\u2019ve always been reluctant to sell it,\u201d he said, adding that they finally relented in 2016. \u201cThe people in charge probably thought that, \u2018You know, Joe has been doing a good job there. Let\u2019s go ahead and sell the restaurants. He needs to grow anyway. Let\u2019s sell it to him.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Ayuyu said he wanted to expand to Guam as long as 10 years ago at a time when Saipan\u2019s economy hit rock bottom.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was doing OK but I saw that I needed to diversify myself to protect my business establishment from having to depend solely on the Saipan economy. From there on, I always thought that if ever I had the opportunity to go to Guam, it will really help me because if things really go from bad to worse on Saipan, I have a backup plan and we\u2019ll have something to fall back on.\u201d<\/p>\n

After acquiring McDonald\u2019s Guam, Ayuyu made sure to implement two things\u2014keep the current staffing and renovate stores that showed their age.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy plan all along was to retain everybody. I want a smooth transition. A lot of people working in the company have been there for a long time so it makes a lot of sense to keep them.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also plans to renovate the Tamuning branch, which has been around 75 years. The other McDonald\u2019s Guam branches are in Hagatna, Maiti, Tumon, Harmon, and Yigo. <\/p>\n

Ayuyu plans to add another store in Yigo this year and has scheduled its groundbreaking in March.<\/p>\n

On Saipan, Ayuyu said he wants to expand his McDonald\u2019s Express in Garapan but is holding back right now from opening a third store.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bottom line in opening a new restaurant is if it will be viable and feasible. Opening a new restaurant is always easy to do, but we want to open in a place and stay there for a long, long time. Two stores on Saipan is OK right now, with the possibility of upgrading the store in Garapan,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Since there is no longer a master concessionaire at the Francisco C. Ada-Saipan International Airport, Ayuyu is thinking of opening a small store at the airport.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt any given time there are 800 to 900 people working there. To top it off you also have the tourists, who sometimes have to wait for hours and hours before getting a flight or coming out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Another source of strength for Ayuyu is the support of his family and employees, some of whom have been with the company for 20 years.<\/p>\n

Ayuyu is married to Marcia and the couple has four children: Joe Jr., Mable, Ashley, and Maria. <\/p>\n

Joe Jr. is Ayuyu\u2019s heir apparent and recently graduated from Hamburger University. He is the manager of McDonald\u2019s Middle Road. Mable, meanwhile, is Ayuyu\u2019s executive assistant and Ashley is the personnel director of McDonald\u2019s Guam. Maria, the youngest, is a student at Mt. Carmel School. Ayuyu also has a daughter from his first marriage, Nadia, who lives in California.<\/p>\n

Ayuyu\u2019s ascension from simple beginnings to now the franchise owner of eight\u2014soon to be nine\u2014McDonald\u2019s stores in Guam and Saipan can be summed up when he was approached by one of the previous winners of the Executive of the Year award during the annual gala last week at the Hyatt Regency Guam.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe came up to me and said \u2018welcome to the big leagues. Now you\u2019re no longer a small potato. You\u2019re now part of the big leagues,\u2019\u201d recounted Ayuyu with a bit of amazement since he knows he\u2019s been playing in the big leagues since overcoming his humble beginnings in Chalan Kanoa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Indeed, McDonald\u2019s Saipan and Guam owner Jose \u201cJoe\u201d C. Ayuyu has come a long way….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":245250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1351,3566,309,67],"class_list":["post-245238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-chalan-kanoa","tag-guam-business-magazine","tag-ok","tag-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}