From Field to Freddy’s
An All-American starts the second half of his career.
At Kansas State University, where he was an All-American football kicker, Jamie Rheem’s focus was three-fold: the snap, the hold, the kick. When those were done well, success on the field followed.
Rheem, a Wichita native, graduated from K-State in 2001 and was picked up as a free agent by the San Francisco 49ers. But in a practice before the first regular season game, he suffered a career-ending hamstring injury. He was devastated—his whole life had been football, from high school at Wichita Collegiate to college with the Wildcats. “I had to grow up pretty fast,” Rheem says.
Bill Snyder, who coached at Kansas State until his retirement in 2005, taught Rheem lessons about perseverance, responsibility and preparing for the big game. To learn time-management, Snyder had made the team arrive to every meeting five minutes early.
Faced with the toughest transition of his life, Rheem drew on Snyder’s lessons for inspiration and applied them to a new career with Freddy’s Frozen Custard, a burger and custard chain in Wichita.
For a year, Rheem busied himself with the day-to-day operations of the store, hoping to learn the business from the ground up. He swept the floors and took out the trash. He flipped burgers and made French fries.
“If I am going to be telling a G.M. what to do, I want to have done the same task myself whether it’s taking out the trash or going through the financials,” Rheem says. “It was the same in football—if someone came up to me and tried to tell me how to kick the ball, I would be like, ‘Well, who the hell are you?’”
Rheem, 31, says his goal is to own a string of Freddy’s stores across the Midwest. Franchising involves finding the right location, then running the store once it opens. To learn site development, Rheem got on with Bachrodt Commercial, a local real estate and development company.
On this morning, Rheem was catching a plane to Iowa then on to St. Louis, to scout possible locations for a Freddy’s franchise. With its combination of fast food served in a vintage setting, Freddy’s has grown to twenty locations since opening in Wichita five years ago.
In some cases, Rheem parks and watches traffic patterns for hours. Even the perfect location won’t mean Rheem will be in business immediately. Commercial development can take months, even years.
“Patience is huge,” Rheem says. It was one of the many traits he said he was surprised to discover he’d learned while playing football.
“There were so many days that we would be in a three-hour meeting with coach Snyder and he would say, ‘All right, guys. I know we’re preparing for Saturday, but at the same time, I want you guys to know that what we’re talking about is going to pertain to your life after football.’ At the time, I was like, ‘Whatever, dude. Keep talking. Blah, blah, blah.’ But you get out, and then a year or two years later you’re thinking about it and you’re like, ‘Damn. He was so right.’”
With no goal posts to aim for and little-to-no chance for endorsement deals—what does a retired NFL kicker turned fast food franchisee work towards?
“I want to be that guy who drives an old car and works his ass off,” Rheem says. “My Superbowl would be to wake up every day wanting to go to the office, wanting to do what I do.”
