In fourth grade, Berry received straight A's in all but one category: "works accurately with speed." In that area, he got a D.

Berry was distraught. Thinking that he would need to pick up the pace, he asked his teacher why he bombed.

"She told me I worked too fast," Berry says. "I still hate that teacher."

Berry also got started in food-service at a young age.

Despite the fact that "I can't cook worth a damn," Berry says that he always has surrounded himself with good food.

When he was 13, he took a job at a fourstar resort hotel, The Balsams, in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire. He worked at the front desk to start.

But he received regular promotions and made assistant general manager by the time he was 20.

"All the bars reported to me and yet I wasn't old enough to be in them," Berry laughs.

Warren E. Pierson, a managing partner at the hotel, remembers Berry as a young man.

"He was extremely eager to learn," Pierson says. "Being at a young age, I would say that he was extremely mature, looking for responsibility, and willing to accept that."

When he left New Hampshire, Berry went to the University of Chicago. He majored in pre-law and spent time during his sophomore year at Oxford University.

But when his brother was killed in an auto accident in the late 1960s, Berry transferred to the University of New Hampshire to be closer to his family.

After college, Berry took a job as a sixth grade teacher, having decided against a career in law. But he says the experience didn't suit him.

"I loved teaching, but I didn't have a lot of patience," he recalls. "I'm driven at what I do. To be driven isn't necessarily good for sixth graders."

After giving up on teaching, Berry moved to Los Angeles, where he spent several years climbing the executive ladder at two fast food chains--the International House of Pancakes and Hamburger Hamlet--embarking on his collegiate food service career with a position at the University of California, Los Angeles.