From Burger King to the World: Central Region VP Reflects on 35-Year Exchange Career as Retirement Nears

In 1988, Tony Ventura was visiting Arizona State University when he and a friend attended a job fair. They saw a table with a sign on it that said, “See the World.”

He went over to talk to the person at the table, who was a representative for the Exchange. After some conversation, the representative set up an interview for Ventura. It wasn’t what he expected.

“My interview was unique,” said Ventura, now vice president for North Central Region. “I didn’t have a person-to-person interview. It was set up at a corporate office as a video recording interview. It was very uncomfortable because you’re not directly talking to anybody. There was a guy with a camera asking point-blank questions, but there’s no interaction, you just answered.

“So that’s how I got hired,” Ventura adds with a chuckle.

Since then, Ventura has served on three continents. Since 2016, he has been a vice president, first for Store Operations and then a regional vice president in Europe and now Central Region.

On Feb. 1, Ventura’s journey will come to an end as he retires from the Exchange, having accomplished a goal of working for the organization for 35 years. Although “working” is not the way he’d put it.

“Throughout my entire career, I’ve always said I never worked a day in my 35 years,” he said, “because it’s just an absolute privilege to wake up every day and serve the military community.”

The early years

In 1984, four years before Ventura joined the Exchange, he worked for a Burger King franchisee in the Phoenix area while he was attending ASU, where he ran one of the franchisee’s stores. The franchisee offered to send him to Burger King University in Los Angeles.

The same year, Burger King signed a five-year franchise agreement to test Burger Kings at select military installations worldwide. That began a partnership with the Exchange that is still going strong after nearly 40 years.

“The franchisee taking a chance on me in ’84 opened the door for me join the Exchange in ’88,” said Ventura, who would spend most of the first decade of his Exchange career at Burger King.

At the time, the Exchange was hiring a lot of associates to work as Management Reserve Force, or MRF (pronounced “murf”,) as it opened more Burger Kings. But when Ventura finished training, instructor Rick Mora contacted Stowell Harden, who was in HR talent placement at the time, and told Harden, “This guy needs to go to a training store, not be a MRF.”

Ventura did work as a MRF at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona—but not for long. When he reported for work, he was told he was in the wrong place.

“So I worked there for one day, and then I went to Fort Ord, California, as a trainer,” he said. “My Luke assignment was probably the shortest assignment in AAFES history.”

After working at Burger Kings at Fort Ord and Fort Benajmin Harrison, Ventura received another Burger King assignment. This one was in Japan.

A Whopper of a Transition

In November 1993, Ventura and his family traveled nearly 5,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean to Misawa Air Base, where he became assistant food activity manager.

“My wife and I had one daughter at that time,” Ventura said. “We weren’t sure what to expect. But going into a foreign country with the Exchange and the military community, it was seamless. That’s one of the beauties of what we do. I’ve spent 20 of my 35 years here overseas, and any time you go overseas, there’s a fear factor. But once you get over there, between the Exchange associates that are working there and the military community, we’ve all moved so many times that everybody is just accepting. You get there and everybody treats you like you’ve been there for five years.”

Ventura found that Burger King especially resonated with the Misawa community, where service members and their families enjoyed the taste of home the restaurant brought them. At the time he arrived, Burger King’s American burger rivals did not have a location in northern Japan. When a rival did open a location, it wasn’t what the military community was looking for.

“When the first McDonald’s opened in northern Japan, we went in there and found that the sodas were warm,” he said. “They were in a 4-ounce pour. Every sandwich had teriyaki sauce or shrimp on it. It was a lot different. So getting a taste of home through what our Burger King had to offer the community and the military definitely brought them back and made them feel more comfortable.”

In August 1998, Ventura returned to the States, continuing as a Burger King manager at Fort Leavenworth. Although it wasn’t as brief as his one-day Luke assignment, his stay there was short. And for completely different reasons.

The rewards of deployment

Ventura had been at Leavenworth for less than a year when, in July 1998, he deployed to the Balkans. He continued to work in food, but not long afterward, he switched to retail for the first time.

“I started at Camp Pleso in Croatia,” Ventura said. “I was there for about 20 days. We had some food facilities, and I replaced the food manager there. Then Marie Clift, who spent a lot of time in the Balkans, was looking for people to go into Kosovo. Three of us raised our hand and did a little caravan to Camp Able Sentry and to Camp Monteith.”

Ventura worked at a hard-building store at Camp Monteith for about 60 days, then went to Camp Bonsteel in Kosovo, where the store was in a tent—which was about to become a larger tent.

“They were getting ready to open about a 40,000-square foot tent to make a bigger PX,” he said. “We also brought in a mobile Burger King truck, so we were able to open that up while we were there, too.”

His experience in the Balkans led Ventura to believe that deployment is the most rewarding thing that anyone at the Exchange could do.

“I’ve worked at plenty of overseas locations,” he said. “But when you’re in remote and isolated locations where the amenities are few and far between, anything that we can do to give them that sense of a little Americana is huge.”

Even small things could be huge when it came to the comforts of home.

“We would get a truck in, and there’d be a parade of military personnel following the truck over to our little tent store in Bosnia,” Ventura said. “They’d wait for us and help us unload it because they wanted to be first in line to have the opportunity to purchase what was on that truck. Getting a Car and Driver magazine that’s three months old was gold to them. Getting a Mountain Dew that they hadn’t had in a long time was a big deal.”

Back to the States—but not for long

Ventura returned to Leavenworth at the end of October 1999, once again managing a Burger King. By January, he was promoted to managing the Leavenworth Exchange food court.

“After deployment and that rewarding experience, I wanted to do more,” Ventura said. “The general manager asked if I wanted to move to the food court, and I accepted the transition to expand my horizons with the Exchange.”

By the end of 2000, he was back in Europe, where he continued to manage a food court, this time at U.S. Army Garrison Schinnen in the Netherlands.

“I was told that it was going be for one year,” Ventura said. “It turned out to be an eight-month assignment. I was moved to Wuerzburg in Germany. Schinnen was a real quick assignment—my family had barely gotten into a house and we were still unpacking boxes when we had to repack them to move on.”

While Ventura was still in Schinnen, about a month before he PCS’d to Wuerzburg, the 9/11 terrorist attacks happened in the United States. The effects reverberated in Europe.

“It was scary,” Ventura said. “We did see the events that took place that day on TVs in the Power Zone, and of course everything went into lockdown. We were locked out of Schinnen for the first seven days. We weren’t allowed onto the installation. Once we were allowed on, there were very tight controls, very strict access.

“But that also meant our relevance was once again at its greatest height,” he continued. “We were where everybody wanted to come because of the trust factor. For the military community, we were their source for everything at that point, because going downtown was a scary proposition for everybody. So everybody used the AAFES facilities, the MWR facilities at that time. And a lot of folks were deploying, so trying to navigate the logistics of that and make sure we had enough product to serve the community, the people who were transitioning from the States as well as our own headed downrange, required a lot of team effort, a lot of coordination with Logistics, MD and HR.”

Moving from food to retail

In August 2003, while still at Wuerzburg, Ventura made the permanent transition into retail, after spending most of the first 15 years of his Exchange career in food.

“The Wuerzburg food court was the largest food court we had in Europe, but I was looking for another challenge,” he said. “The general manager at the time, Gary Burton, came over to me and said, ‘I’ve got an opportunity at the main store to come over as operations manager.’ He gave me the opportunity to work there a couple of times temporarily—and I really enjoyed it. It was an unknown, and I was out of my comfort zone, but it just seemed right.”

At the time, Wuerzburg was the largest store in Europe, and once again, Ventura found that the team welcomed him without reservations or hesitation. Knowing he was new, team members helped him get up to speed on operations, easing the transition for him.

“That’s what’s cool about our organization, is that we’re not singular about what we do,” he said. “We have so many different channels and directorates that your career can take you in many directions. All you have to do is be willing to learn and grow and work hard.”

After nearly 6⅓ years in Germany, Ventura PCS’d in February 2008 to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, where he took on his first general manager position. It was another unique location for him.

“Turkey is the only country that’s partially in Europe and partially in the Middle East,” he said. “By that time, I had three daughters, and we were in the mainland portion of Turkey, which is in the Middle East. Taking your family to the Middle East after 9/11 was kind of scary but being at the Exchange as long as I had been, my family had traveled to Japan, two of my daughters were born in Japan and raised in Europe. They didn’t have any issues moving onto a military installation in Turkey, which was actually a Turkish military installation that the U.S. shared.”

Ventura was one of two Americans working for the Incirlik Exchange. The rest of the team was made up of Turkish local nationals.

“There were cultural differences everywhere we went,” he said. “You get full immersion into a different culture and new languages. And I’ve really enjoyed that part. I’ve never mastered any foreign language, but I’ve always tried to learn as much as I can. I think that goes a long way with our associates from different cultural backgrounds. Even though we come and go, putting in an effort to learn their culture, learn their language and immerse yourself helps build relationships with teammates.”

Back to the States—and then back to Europe again

In June 2010, Ventura returned to the States, where he spent nearly three years as general manager of the Robins Air Force Base Exchange before moving on to Fort Riley, where he was GM until 2015. He then moved into Store Operations, where he worked his way up to vice president.

“I absolutely loved Store Ops,” he said. “We were the voice of the field in headquarters. There’s nothing that happens in the field or headquarters that doesn’t come across the desk of Store Operations. Because directorates need to know, if they roll something out, is it something that will work in the field. In Store Operations, you’re affecting the world, and we were able to make a lot of impactful decisions that we felt good about.”

By 2018, he was back in the field, as a regional vice president in Europe region.

Ventura says he found similarities between Store Operations and Europe Region, because in the latter, his teams did things that had worldwide effects while he was in a regional role. He is particularly proud of the support the Exchange was able to provide in Eastern Europe, at installations and outposts in Poland, Lithuania, the Balkans and elsewhere.

“Again, it goes back to taking care of those troops that are out there with very little resources that they can rely on,” he says. “And we’re that little bright spot for them. So making sure that they can get that certain soda or energy drink and some snacks is just an amazing feeling.”

At the beginning of 2023, after nearly 4½ years in Europe, Ventura returned to the U.S. to take on his current position as North Central regional vice president. His territory stretches from North Dakota to West Virginia. Coming back to the States was part of a long-term plan.

“My goal was to do 35 years with the Exchange,” he says. “I wanted to be able to come back to the States before retirement to get acclimated back to the U.S. and be able to reconnect with family and figure out what’s next.”

But wait—this isn’t quite over yet

Although Ventura’s father served in the Air Force in the Korean War, Ventura wasn’t born until much later, and didn’t really grow up with the military or have the military brat experience. Things were different for his own family.

“Being overseas as long as I was, my wife and three daughters were a huge part of the AAFES family as well,” he said. “When the military was doing events and we were helping out, or we’re putting on pet shows or doing Fall Fest or pictures of Santa, we’re always looking for volunteers. And I had four volunteers for every event. I can’t tell you the countless hours they put into supporting communities because of what I did. It was my job, so it was just normal for my three girls and my wife to be there as well.”

Things were different for him, too. When he started at an Exchange Burger King 1988, he never imagined that he was beginning a career that would allow him to see the world.

“It’s amazing what the Exchange has to offer,” he says. “I’d worked for a Burger King on the outside and thought that was a dead-end job. And then I come to the Exchange working for a Burger King, and because of the opportunities the Exchange offers, I’ve had the opportunity to move around the world, get into retail, get into general manager and regional vice president positions, work at headquarters. My wife and I have been to numerous countries. I think I’ve been to a total of 48 countries. It’s been an amazing ride.”

The ride isn’t exactly over.

“I have a very short retirement window,” Ventura said. “I’m retiring Feb. 1. And in July, I come back to the Exchange to replace Beth Goodman-Bluhm as the vice president in Southwest Asia for a year.” (Goodman-Bluhm, who retired in December 2022, took a similar path, deploying to Kuwait and Jordan, where she was a general manager before becoming a regional vice president for SWA in fall 2023.)

He says he’s doing this post-retirement deployment out of love of the Exchange’s mission of serving those who serve.

“People get up every day and they go to a job and there’s highs and lows,” he said. “In our job, it’s all highs. Every day is a high. Because we’re doing something that’s one of the most noble jobs that’s out there, supporting the men and women of our armed forces. Every one of us is fulfilling our passion and taking care of those military members who take care of us.

“I remember a recruitment commercial that showed a lot of civilians running from smoke. And you see the military members running into the smoke. And we’re running right behind them to make sure that they’re taken care of. I think what we do is one of the most noble things outside of being in the military itself.”

If you’d like to wish Mr. Ventura well on his retirement journey, please comment on this story.