Jack Cowin
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Jack Cowin (born 1943) is an Australian businessman who owns Hungry Jack's, the Burger King franchise in Australia and is the Executive Chairman of Competitive Foods Australia, one of the country's largest privately held businesses. He is sometimes called The Father of Fast Food in Australia.
Born in Windsor in Ontario, Canada, his father had been posted to Australia briefly by Ford and later encouraged his son to consider emigrating there. He became an insurance salesman with London Life for four years in Toronto before deciding to visit Australia to assess some business opportunities. Seeing long queues at a Chinese takeaway restaurant while vacationing in Sydney, he became convinced that fast food would sell well. He later returned to Australia to evaluate expanding KFC into the market that at that stage had limited fast food options.
He bought the right to open ten KFC franchises in Western Australia, raised $10,000 from thirty people to launch the business in December 1969, having moved with his wife and two very young children. Those who invested $10,000 then, had an investment worth around $3.5 million as at March 2006.
After opening eight KFC outlets, he bought the rights to Burger King. They both later discovered someone else had the rights to the Burger King trademark in Australia, so Cowin instead called the outlets Hungry Jack's. Many years later he had a falling out with Burger King over the name and other issues related to their franchise agreement which was eventually resolved in his favour.
The business Competitive Foods Australia continues to be privately held by his family, with an estimated value of $350 million. It owns 50 KFC outlets in Western Australia and the Northern Territory in addition to the 300 Hungry Jack's outlets throughout Australia, only 100 franchised. His family is also the majority shareholder in Domino's Pizza, one of the country's biggest pizza franchises.
Cowin also owns a meat processing business that exports throughout the world, in addition to a substantial investment in Stanbroke Pastoral Company one of the country's biggest cattle station operators. He owns a premium winery Torbreck in the Barossa Valley, South Australia. He is also an investor with 40% of BridgeClimb the business that operates walking tours over the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Bridgeclimb itself made an estimated $10 million profit in 2002. He also very shrewdly invested in Network Ten, the television broadcaster, selling out of his stake with a profit of around $100 million. He is also one of the largest investors in Ross Human Directors Limited, an Australian listed recruiting company. Cowin is also an investor in the Lone Star restaurant chain in Canada.
He is a member of the board of directors of Canwest, Ten Network Ltd. and is Chairman of investment bank CIBC in Australia. He is also a director of the Sydney Olympic Park Authority. Cowin is an active member of the World Presidents Organization. He lives in Sydney with his wife, with whom he has had four children.
He made a donation to the University of Western Ontario to pay for the stands of the new football field, named after his father Stanley J. Cowin.
Cowin had a net worth of $480 million CDN in 2006. [1]
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