Word: dunfeys
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...spirited executive meetings, few companies can match New England's innkeeping Dunfey group. Twice a month in a second-floor room of Lamie's Tavern, the only place in Hampton, N.H. with a liquor license, gathers the company's top management team: Board Chairman Catherine Dunfey, 73, and Sons John, 44, president of the family firm, Gerald, 32, Walter, 36, Robert, 40, and William, 42. With a portfolio of some 30 subsidiaries in such varied fields as real estate, insurance, and turkey farming to consider, the agenda often runs right through lunch, dinner and a midnight snack...
...time the meetings have run their course, most of the family's decisions are unanimous. And, says Vice President Bob Dunfey, "When there have been mistakes, no one says 'I told you so.' " One reason may be that there have been few mistakes. Since they acquired Lamie's Tavern, their first acquisition, in 1954, Ma Dunfey and her boys have increased sales from $500,000 to $10 million. Along the way, they have spread a string of nine motor inns and hotels through five New England states, grown from a mom-and-sons outfit...
Born the sons of Leroy Dunfey, a Lowell, Mass, storekeeper and small-time Irish politician who died in 1952, the five innkeeping Dunfeys (three other brothers set off on their own, and four sisters all became nuns) first set up business in the resort town of Hampton Beach. Beginning with a single hot-dog stand, the boys wheeled and dealt themselves in and out of restaurants, real estate and a bank before taking over the Lamie Tavern and a hotel-keeping career. Since then, their projects, all overseen by Ma Dunfey, have ranged from acquisition of the 800-room Eastland...
Though the Dunfeys often operate under franchises, President John Dunfey says that the family's chief asset is its effort "to keep the personal involvement in the business that we had when we had just a hot-dog stand." To keep up "the spirit and warmth of the old Yankee taverns," the Dunfey inns lure travelers with such country titles as "Cracker Barrel Lounge...
Before long, Dunfey inns will have another feature. In August, when the entire 13-member clan jets to Dublin for a reunion on the ould sod, the family plans to recruit local barmaid talent to staff "Dunfey's Taverns," being set up in the family establishments...