Baryalay Razi and his daughter Lema Hudson Razi, who are also operators of Blaze Pizza and Aloha Poke stores in Texas, plan to open three Ford’s Garage restaurants over the next five years in Houston.
When Baryalay Razi was a United Nations delegate from Afghanistan for five years before being granted political asylum in the United States from his war-torn country in 1995, he had no restaurant experience.
But like a lot of successful restaurant franchisees, he was willing to do whatever it took to climb the corporate ladder. A family friend hired Razi as an assistant manager at Whataburger in Texas, and over the next 20 years he worked his way up from general manager to area manager to director of operations in Fort Worth and Dallas…