Newly Arrived SeaWorld GM Achieves
Long-Held Ambition
little after 6 on an evening in late January, J. Dennis Burks was in Tampa Bay, Fla. to host an appreciation dinner for food-service employees at a Busch Gardens park.
It was an important night and Burks was eager to fully express his gratitude toward the staff, but a phone call a half-hour before had spun his mind into a thousand other places. Chief among them was San Diego.
At the time, Burks was corporate vice president of food service for Busch Entertainment Corp.’s nine parks, and the call was from his boss, Victor Abbey.
Abbey, chairman of Busch Entertainment, offered Burks a new job: general manager of SeaWorld San Diego.
Burks paused at the offer. He had concerns about his family , he supports his elderly parents, and he was concerned about whether they could weather a move to the West Coast.
At the dinner, though, Burks’ behavior betrayed his excitement about the opportunity.
Many of the attendees had worked with him for more than a decade, and he spoke sentimentally about his many years in the company’s corporate level of food service.
By the time he announced he had to cancel plans to tour the park’s facilities the next day, some suspicions must have stirred, he said.
On a recent Friday morning, a little coastal cloud cover shielding the skies, more than a month had passed since that night in Tampa. Burks was less than a week into his new job at the Mission Bay theme park.
Facing A Learning Curve
Affable and candid, Burks talked about the hectic schedule and steep learning curve that comes with taking on a role like this.
He was not yet ready to answer questions on issues such as SeaWorld’s expansion effort, including the park’s attempts to change its master plan within the larger master plans for Mission Bay, he noted quickly.
But Burks did talk about coming full circle , getting the job he originally wanted but never expected to have.
He was born in 1949, a cherished child to working-class parents. They had lost their other son in a tragic train accident a couple of years before. Their support motivated him through school, college and into work, he said, affection clearly in his voice.
Right after his high school graduation and just before college, armed with plans to become an architect, Burks took on a summer job: tram driver for a Six Flags theme park being built 20 minutes from his Austell, Ga., home.
He still remembers the newspaper stories about Six Flags. The park would be only the third theme park in the country, he recalled.
A Lead Driver
Burks drove construction workers that summer, but when the park opened, he was kept on to transport guests. He was soon named a “lead” driver.
“The lowest level of management,” he said, smiling good naturedly.
By the next summer, Burks was promoted to supervisor, and then senior supervisor. Eventually, he worked himself up the management track and began to really enjoy the business.
It was easy to do, he said. Just as easy was picturing himself someday running an operation like Six Flags.
“The general manager at the park there, and at the other two parks in America, were all really young guys,” he said. “Even though I was just a college student, I could imagine having that job. I could visualize being in that role.”
Burks set aside his aspirations to be an architect, choosing what he said was “the excitement and the dynamics that are involved in running one of these parks being out there on a day-to-day basis and handling all the situations that come up.
“It was totally exciting, or at least it was for me. It changed my whole career path.”
Burks took on a general management major, graduating from the University of Georgia in ’72.
After that, he asked to be the first person in a Six Flags’ new executive training program. He was then surprised to find himself in blue-collar roles, including a job at the park’s warehouse.
That first winter, he was working security, Burks said. “What is wrong with this picture?” he recalled thinking. He was later grateful to find that he had picked up a broader view of the park’s “back end” workings, he said.
A sales job for Six Flags and then a human relations management position at the park taught him more about the business, but also made him long for a daily operations role.
When an executive position surfaced in the park’s food-service department, he asked to give it a try.
“I knew nothing about food service,” he recalled. “They said, ‘There’s the cafeteria, here’s a budget, it needs a remodel and go at it!’ That was it. I went out and did it.”
Choosing Different Path
He studied other restaurants around town, built up his knowledge, and in the meantime, became enchanted with the work.
“I really loved the dynamics of food service, creating the product every day and all of the action and the complexity it involved,” he said.
He thought his interest in food service would come at a cost, though.
“As I started moving in that direction, I realized that it was not the area from which general managers would come,” he said.
Burks decided he would have to give up his original goal.
During his college years, the Six Flags park was sold to another company, and the park had suffered for it. Several of Burks’ co-workers had headed to parks operated by Busch Entertainment. Burks decided to call the company as well, and he was hired to run the Tampa park’s food-service department.
It was his first day there, in 1974, that a payroll clerk named Sandy first caught Burks’ eye. They would marry five years later, just in time to move to St. Louis, where Busch’s headquarters are located. Burks had been promoted to corporate director of food service.
As with his short-lived sales stint at Six Flags, Burks missed the day-to-day work in the park. He was transferred to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Va., where he managed the park’s food service, merchandise, games, warehouse and a promotional center for Busch owner Anheuser-Busch Cos.
A year later, a promotion to corporate development director transferred Burks back to Anheuser’s St. Louis headquarters. He was tasked with Busch Entertainment’s new restaurant venture, a chain of bakery-cafes that was sold a couple of years later.
In 1987, Burks was transferred to Busch’s theme park project in Port Aventura, Spain, near Barcelona. The project had a lot of red tape, and Busch ending up selling it before its completion. The company then bought the four SeaWorld parks, and Burks returned to Busch’s food-service department. He was promoted to corporate vice president, food service, in 1993.
Positive Impressions
His on-the-job openness has made an impression on Marty Jacknis, a partner at Amityville, N.Y.-based Calico Cottage Inc. Jacknis’ company sells fudge-making products and information to Busch.
“When you have something important to say, he listens even though he has a lot on his plate,” Jacknis said. “A lot of times, people say ‘I’m busy’ and this and that. Dennis is a gentleman at all times.”
In his time creating eateries for Busch parks, such as a 1,900-seat Italian restaurant and another designed as a German festival hall, Burks honed his concept of “a compelling reason to dine.” A park’s visitors aren’t necessarily a captive set of customers, he said.
Another example, years in the works, would be created in San Diego , Shipwreck Reef Caf & #233;.
Burks recalled aiming for an immersive concept. The idea was to have customers feel like they have entered a deserted island, with a d & #233;cor of ships’ remnants and animals and other castaways as additional entertainment.
Literally encircled by a new water-rapids ride, the project was a risk , and would cost about $10 million, he said. Focus groups and other research backed up his instinct.
“Even though there was a risk there, we felt strongly that what we were doing there was going in the right direction,” Burks recalled.
“It was a bold step, if I do say so,” he said. “I believe in innovation. I believe in taking risks I like to call it a controlled risk.”
He continued, “I believe in thorough analysis and really doing your homework and then applying your expertise.”
In the midst of the Shipwreck project, walking through the San Diego park, Burks thought of his early ambitions to be a general manager. He now admits he was a little envious of Bill Davis, who had run the park since ’97.
Davis’ promotion in January to corporate vice president of guest services led to Victor Abbey’s phone call and offer to Burks.
Davis is pleased with the company’s choice for his replacement. Recalling Burks’ work during the Shipwreck Reef project, he said, “I think he did a great job Dennis was able to work with everybody and kind of become a member of the San Diego team, if you will, in helping put that restaurant together.
“I think it’s absolutely wonderful that he’s going to come out here and be the head of the San Diego team as a general manager. I think Dennis is going to do a fine job as GM here.”
