Faces of Milwaukee: Junior Bridgeman

If you look at a list of current and former NBA players by net worth, the top 5 or 10 would likely all be immediately recognizable except one: Ulysses "Junior" Bridgeman, the subject of today's portrait. Unlike the others on that list, his fortune was not achieved through all-star play leading to lucrative endorsements and public appearances. Instead, he learned the fast food industry while still a player and became a Franchisee and entrepreneur. Today is he is worth an estimated $600 million, quite a feat for a man who never made more than $350k in an NBA Season.

Bridgeman was born in East Chicago, Indiana and was a high school and college basketball star, reaching the Final Four with the University of Louisville Cardinals in 1975. He was drafted by the Lakers that year eighth overall, but was famously traded almost immediately to the Milwaukee Bucks as part of the blockbuster trade that sent Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to the Lakers. He played well on the Bucks through the early 80s, typically playing as the 6th man with an occasional breakout game. He was traded to the LA Clippers where he played for several years before returning back to Milwaukee to play one more season in 1987.

During the offseason over the final few years of his career, he began to learn the Wendy's Franchisee business model, and began investing in restaurants. obtaining 3 franchises while still a player and 2 more shortly after retirement. Despite low profitability early on forcing him to invest more of his personal savings than originally anticipated, he eventually used his business acumen to expand his holdings to more than 160 Wendy's, becoming their largest franchise holder. Many will remember seeing his signature on the comment cards asking for your honest feedback that sat at every Wendy's table in his Milwaukee restaurants. His company Bridgeman Foods Inc. expanded into Chili's, Fazoli's and Blade Pizza and at its peak brought in over $350 million in revenue a year. In 2016, he sold the restaurant business and shortly after became a bottler for the Coca-cola Company, one of only 3 new bottlers established in the last 40 years. Today he runs a production plant and 18 distribution centers as the President and CEO of Heartland Coca-Cola with his son Justin.