It all began with a handshake.
As Celton Hayden Jr. tells Business Report, he knew he would have a lifelong career with CC’s Coffee House when he met H. Norman Saurage at a suburban Dallas CC’s that Hayden managed nearly 14 years ago.
“I was outside cleaning up the parking lot when I saw this unassuming white gentleman with glasses walking toward me,” says Hayden, now the president and CEO of CC’s Coffee House. “I didn’t really think much of it until he introduced himself and said he wanted to talk with me.”
They spoke about Hayden’s position with the company and ended the conversation with a firm handshake.
“That handshake felt like my dad’s,” Hayden says. “I knew I was dealing with honest people.” For Hayden, who has a deep faith in personal connections and gut decisions, the handshake represented loyalty, kinship, trust, clarity and respect, all the traits his late father, Celton Hayden Sr., exuded.
Hayden’s career with CC’s began in 2001 when he was recruited by a company in Florida to manage that Carrollton, Texas, location. He says he identified with the passion of the recruitment letter and vowed his store would be the best.
“There’s an art to nuance and art to accountability,” says the 41-year-old Hayden, who is married with three children and one grandchild. “I trained myself to push, push, push. And I was always taught to do the job you want and dress for the job you want.”
He oversaw 12 stores in the Dallas area until 2003, when Matt Saurage, chairman of Community Coffee Co., closed the 17 CC’s between Austin and Dallas to focus on business in Louisiana.
“Celton was the only of the 200 employees we brought home [from Texas],” says Saurage. “He was exceptional and we wanted him to stay with the company. He has this great entrepreneurial spirit and takes everything he’s doing, big or small, and embraces it.”
Hayden moved his family to Louisiana in 2003.
During his tenure with the company, Hayden also managed stores in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, working his way up the corporate ladder with old-fashioned grit and commitment—just like his father.
And it paid off.
Last year, when CC’s Coffee House separated from Community Coffee Company to grow and develop independently, Hayden was named president and CEO.
Read the full feature from the current issue of Business Report, and also be sure to check out a sidebar feature on Hayden’s five tips for successfully running a business of any size.
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