Flores fund founded at UH college of business
Star-Bulletin staff
L&L Drive-Inn President and Chief Executive Officer Eddie Flores has established a scholarship at the Shidler College of Business at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
The $1 million Eddie Flores Jr. and Elaine Flores Endowed Scholarship Fund will help students pursuing a degree from the school. Scholarships, based on financial need, will benefit employees of the restaurant, real estate and music industries, athletes from Hawaii, or their children.
Flores' gift of $500,000, matched by businessman Jay Shidler under a gift fund set up last year, is the largest endowment scholarship established at the school since its inception in 1949. First Insurance Co. donated $500,000 in July, also matched by the Shidler fund, to set up a professorship.
Flores immigrated to Hawaii at 16 and later graduated from UH in 1970 with a degree in business administration. Two years later he established Sun Pacific Realty and in 1976 bought the first L&L Drive-Inn for his mother.
"The Shidler College of Business taught me all I need to know to be successful and competitive in business in Hawaii and in the mainland," Flores said.
Flores and partner Johnson Kam have expanded L&L to more than 180 locations in Hawaii and on the mainland.
L&L has been named a "Hot Concept" by Nation's Restaurant News magazine. It has also been steadily moving up the Restaurants & Institutions magazine Top 400 Chains list, ranking No. 275 for 2007, with 168 units generating $80 million in sales.