By definition, an entrepreneur is one who organises, manages and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise, which seems like the proper way to describe Eureka Casinos CEO Andre Carrier. Carrier has lived an entrepreneurial lifestyle since before he could drive a car, having opened a restaurant with a friend – after his father gave the young aspirers a budget to kickstart their new endeavour. At 16 years of age, Carrier was learning what it meant to not only run a business and provide for himself, but for the service he required to keep operations maintained. The experience helped ripen Carrier’s knowledge of the culinary and hospitality industries, as well as showcase what it meant to be a leader. Now, he sits in his Nevada office alongside Gambling Insider, having become just that – a leader – with decades of experience within the casino business.
TASTE OF RESPONSIBILITY
“You could not make enough money to pay yourself. You could not make enough money to buy food for next week’s service,” Carrier reflects. “That was really helpful, because effectively by the time I was 15-16 years old, I was getting an understanding of those very real issues. I was asking friends to come work with me in the kitchen but realising I needed to pay them all first. Do I have enough money to buy the chicken and the seafood I need to start service again Monday if I pay them on Sunday? That entrepreneurial experience very early in my life would scare most away but, for me, it felt natural. It was something that actually energises me. I loved the fear behind it a little bit.”
Referencing popular television show The Bear, Carrier outlines a scene where the main character is told the reason why chefs cook in the first place: to nourish people. For that same reason, the Eureka CEO fell in love with the hospitality and culinary industries, to “nourish the internal customer.” Getting the opportunity to work with people he knew also helped build confidence in one another and utilise the excitement of trying to bring a business to life. That “spark” can be the origin story of numerous successes, something Carrier would come to understand greater when he’d eventually make the move to Las Vegas.
While other teenagers around the age Carrier had begun a culinary career were stressing about what university degree to pursue, the young restaurateur knew exactly what direction he wanted to take. He joined the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, an institution with over a century’s worth of sending future professionals into hospitality.
Carrier’s entrepreneurial desire did not end in high school, as he quickly started a catering company. And supplying a US-based university meant most of his stock would be alcohol-related, recounting that “90%” of his inventory was liquor. That particular discovery did not come as a shock to Carrier, nor Gambling Insider...
Soon, though, Carrier was offered a more conventional job in Las Vegas after graduating from Cornell, the Assistant Executive Steward position at the Four Seasons. “I would still tell you it was a great job offer because it was the Four Seasons, but I’m pretty sure Assistant Executive Steward translates to Head Dishwasher. That’s what that is. But my friends would still call me and say: ‘Oh my god, you got the Four Seasons shot, good for you man.’ There were only three or four of us that had ended up at Four Seasons out of Cornell.”
A CHANCE ENCOUNTER
Despite the excitement that came with the Four Seasons position, a fortuitous meeting would prompt the budding chef to change course. Carrier had the opportunity to meet Chris Lowden, whose father Paul owned the Sahara Resorts in Las Vegas. After also meeting Paul’s wife and daughter, Carrier felt he had the chance to work for the type of company he knew well: a family-run business. What was meant to be a three-month trial run on the casino-resort side of the hospitality industry has now reached more than 30 years, and Carrier doesn’t appear to lament the decision to pass up on the “Head Dishwasher” position at Four Seasons. “It just felt like home. And even though it was casinos, which was not something I had directly contemplated before coming out and visiting with (Chris) and his dad, there was just a sense of ‘I get this.’ This is a family business, I know a family business, and I chose it over Four Seasons,” Carrier recalls. Having started with Sahara Resorts in July 1992, Carrier began to realise the opportunity surrounding gaming in Las Vegas and the growth about to be seen from tribal operations. At a time when states were still considering the possibility of legalising gambling and tribes were beginning to file for property contracts in areas such as Washington, Sahara looked to Carrier to help push the company forward in an ever-changing scene.
“They were interested in my grit and my desire to work hard. My natural instinct is to behave like somebody who has ownership and stake in the game, someone who is ultimately accountable. I think that’s just in the DNA of kids who come from family-run experiences,” Carrier adds. Carrier served as the VP of Marketing and Administration as well as VP of Development during his tenure with Sahara Resorts, gaining executive experience while taking his first leap into the industry. Given the opportunity to “work way outside his lane,” such as being on-site in Missouri and Mississippi to oversee the construction and opening of a dealer school, Carrier describes the Lowden family as “essential” in helping him enter the gaming scene.
I learned so much from Tilman Fertitta about knowing your business, knowing your numbers and finding ways to say yes to the customer
A CROSSROADS AND A PHONE CALL
Carrier had begun working within various departments in the casino and whatever the Lowden family needed his expertise in. Leaving behind the food and beverage life for a short time, he was beginning to understand the inner workings behind what was helping Las Vegas grow into the gaming capital of the world. Carrier had the opportunity to work with Sahara Resorts for seven years until 1999, when he began to contemplate leaving the growing city and joining Four Seasons after allowing its original offer to pass. He also found himself looking around at his peers, as most were returning to school for a Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA). Deciding a call to his father may help, Carrier evaluated this very option. His father, however, had no problem reminding him what he had already accomplished thus far, questioning what an MBA would do for someone so heavily involved in a growing sector of the industry already. Carrier’s father was also high school friends with Bob Halloran, the former President of Sports for Mirage Resorts... “I had been considering leaving Las Vegas and returning to the Four Seasons or staying to continue my career here, but my dad had known Bob Halloran since high school and decided to give him a call. He asked me how I would feel about beginning an executive career in Las Vegas. He really advocated for me to stay and make the most of my experiences,” Carrier explains. Halloran made his own mark in Las Vegas by producing various sporting events that have turned the area into a common site for any highly anticipated competition. Indeed, many today champion Las Vegas as a contender for sporting capital of the world. For Carrier personally, Halloran gave him the opportunity to become President and COO of the Golden Nugget Laughlin, a resort casino located near the Colorado River in Nevada.
His new position would bring him front and centre with one of the most recognisable and historic families in the city’s history, Steve and Elaine Wynn, as well as Mirage Resorts CFO Bobby Baldwin. Carrier then began learning under the tutelage of Steve Wynn and Baldwin, as the first lesson taught continues to be used by Carrier to this day. “They would always say ‘Andre, it’s okay if you don’t know, but please, very quickly, just tell us. You don’t have to have all the answers, just don’t tell me something that isn’t true. You’re not here to do any harm or to blame anyone for what doesn’t get completed.’ It’s something I knew I had to learn very quickly, especially so early on in my career,” Carrier says. He oversaw Golden Nugget Laughlin until September of 2005, when Wynn decided to bring him back to the city in which his gaming career began, as he became the COO of Golden Nugget Las Vegas.
LEARNING FROM THE BEST
He would only hold the position for less than a year before Tilman Fertitta, Owner, Chairman and CEO of Landry, bought Golden Nugget Las Vegas and Golden Nugget Laughlin for a combined $140m, while also assuming $155m in debt. The Fertittas were well known in the Las Vegas area after Frank Fertitta Jr. had founded Station Casinos. Learning under Tilman (who has previously appeared in the CEO Special of sister publication Gaming America magazine) provided Carrier with the chance to develop a greater understanding for the numbers side of business operations. “I learned so much from him about knowing your business, knowing your numbers and finding ways to say yes to the customer. He just has such a level of detail and veracity because he ran such a diverse enterprise. The largest restaurant company in the US, hotels, casinos and now he’s got sports. He’s able to do that because he has a system; he knows and understands the numbers to a level of detail most entrepreneurs don’t,” Carrier remarks.
“I don’t think a week goes by where I’m not disappointed in myself because I know Tilman would be disappointed in me for not knowing my numbers as well as I should. But that motivates me to get back up and grind!” Carrier was able to meet the Fertitta family, including Tilman’s children, who currently help run operations for various casino resorts in Las Vegas that fall under the Station Casinos brand. He began to acknowledge how much work they put into their business, how demanding it was and the moments it could take away from spending time with one another. “Having your family business means doing what you can to serve them as well. The cues I learned from the Fertitta family were some of the teachings I passed down to my children and the way in which I raised them. It wasn’t even just a professional experience, it actually helped grow my personal life as well. Those people were not just mentors of business for me; it went beyond that.
PARALLEL PATHS
While staying with the Golden Nugget and continuing to learn under Fertitta was certainly an option, Carrier had begun speaking with good friend Greg Lee about the possibility of working for a casino resort in Mesquite, Nevada. Having worked in what Carrier described as “parallel paths” for many years, the two had talked extensively about what it was like to build their respective skill sets in gaming. Like the Fertittas, Carrier had the chance to spend time with Greg’s brother Ernie and his parents, Ted and Doris. Greg made the move to Las Vegas in 1988 to help his parents transition into gaming, beginning with the original Eureka Casino that was located on Sahara Avenue.
Having departed Las Vegas to continue his studies in southern California and New York City, Lee returned to Las Vegas to help build the Eureka Casino Resort in Mesquite, which opened in 1997. By September 2006, the property had become a familiar name in the southern Nevada region, not only as a place for casino players, but for tourists and locals that wanted to escape the bustling pace of Las Vegas for a short period. Lee then approached Carrier and asked if the then-Golden Nugget executive was ready to help him grow their own business from the ground up. While Eureka was well known in Mesquite and the surrounding area, there was still plenty of room for growth and opportunity, and Lee wanted one of his closest friends by his side to help the casino resort turn into a premier destination. “We always had these great conversations about going through the life passage together until this one day where we said ‘Hey, we enjoy spending time together, we have similar as a teenager, Carrier knew how important being a family could be for a business.
I hope a lot of people begin to consider ESOPs as a structure of their business, because it’s a powerful path for people to see and attain financial independence
That support and accountability is what led Carrier to accepting the role of COO with Eureka Casino Resort and the Lee family, despite how difficult it was to say goodbye to Fertitta, the man who helped prepare him for the task he was about to undertake. “We did it over time and we did it methodically; it happened very naturally. It was difficult to leave the family, it was extremely hard. But it’s funny, because Tilman’s an entrepreneur and this was an entrepreneurial decision.” Carrier comments. “I remember stopping by after the first remodel of the coffee shop at Eureka Las Vegas and cutting the cake at the opening of the hotel in Mesquite. Every step of the way, being present for that helped the whole process feel much more natural. It made it feel like home almost, father instilled a lesson upon the two that those decisions would not always be perfect, but that did not mean it had to be seen as a failure.
“Mr Lee always used to say ‘The most important thing in business is staying in business.’ While he also said there is no one secret in how to do that, the main idea was don’t ever pony up and bet everything because you have to be prepared to live another day. You will make imperfect decisions, or you might even make perfect decisions at an imperfect time,” Carrier reflects. “If you think about all the great entrepreneurs in history, they deployed similar strategies to stay in business even when close to extinction. They didn’t go extinct right? They lived to see another day and wrote more chapters of their story. That’s why it was such great advice, especially for a family business. When you have an operation such as ours, you need to think over long periods of time even if you’re struggling in the short term.”
PROTECTING THE FAMILY’S FUTURE
Those beliefs have been challenged with great strength throughout Carrier’s tenure with Eureka, including the global financial crisis that spanned the late 2000s and the Covid-19 pandemic that caused many businesses to cease operations entirely. While Carrier always believed his operation would persevere, the CEO and his family of employees “didn’t have a business plan for zero revenue like others during the pandemic.”
What they were planning for, however, was turning Eureka Casino Resort into the first-ever fully employee-owned casino in the US, after noticing participation in the company’s 401k plan was under 18%. Employees that had been with the property for the majority of their careers found themselves unprepared for retirement, an issue Carrier took seriously as someone who appreciated the generational value of family-businesses. Here, the opportunity for real worker accountability Carrier and Lee had been seeking presented itself. “In a family business, you think about generations, or Greg likes to compare it to fine wine. We have the most valuable, hard-working and knowledgeable people in the business, but there was no clear path for them to be financially independent,” Carrier explains. “So that acted as a breadcrumb for us and we had to find ways to incentivise them to participate in the 401k program. But the truth is that has to come from your pay, which means less money for groceries, for car payments, right? Nobody has ever said ‘jheeze, I’m just making so much money let me put some aside for retirement.’”
Employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) are company-funded accounts for retirement that provide employees with shares in the company as part of their compensation. The shares usually range from 6-10% of their salary and must be bought back at fair market value when the employee leaves or retires. It was not an easy concept for Carrier and Lee to teach their employees at first, as many were left confused as to how they went from just putting in a typical 40-hour work week to becoming a stakeholder in the business. Carrier was determined to make this new program a reality, though. “I hope a lot of people begin to consider ESOPs as a structure of their business, because it’s a powerful path for people to see and attain financial independence. I think it takes several years of receiving your ESOP statements, seeing your name, the number of shares you have before people go ‘Oh damn, this is real.’ It can be a powerful force,” Carrier said. ESOPs allow for more financial independence after retirement age is reached, as an employee is paid a fair-market rate for their respective shares, instead of having money taken out of their paycheck each month. Carrier also noticed the tax ramifications of switching to an ESOP program, with the Internal Revenue Service providing clarity on how his employees could use the ESOPs to plan for a better future.
A PURPOSE IN LIFE
In early 2019, Eureka purchased the former Seabrook Park, a greyhound racing track in southern New Hampshire that opened in 1973, now named The Brook. Eureka has entirely reimagined and transformed the entire 75-acre property, creating a 90,000 sq ft casino entertainment destination. The facility features a new showroom, a DraftKings Sportsbook that represents the largest in New England, two full-service restaurants, poker room and a casino floor that offers more than 500 gaming machines. Primarily, however, The Brook is now the largest charity casino in the US. Since Eureka stepped forward in 2019, it has donated more than $28m to hundreds of local charities. As such, Carrier found himself not only in charge of the first 100% employee-owned casino, but also operating the largest charity casino in the US. “We were coming to terms with the fact that we needed to diversify our business. If we were evaluating a long-term retirement plan that had only one investment in one industry in a single geographical part of the world, we’d probably think the fund manager should be fired. And so all of those things made it really palatable to look at this opportunity in New Hampshire,” Carrier says
“There’s no doubt what really got us engaged is the charity casino structure. You are giving money to Big Brothers, Big Sisters, Meals on Wheels, Make-A-Wish. Greg and I got super enthusiastic about that because it aligned with what gets us up in the morning. That renegade entrepreneurial vision – it was our moment. It was the right scale for us, it was affordable and we realised how great the people are. We wanted to add them to our family.” Carrier’s care for others extends past his own, now quite large, family. He led food drives, the creation of a vaccine centre and filmed motivational videos to keep spirits high in Mesquite during the Covid-19 pandemic. But Carrier is also driven by those around him. He remembers that bettering himself is needed every day.
“We always keep our mind focused on getting better together, especially being employee-owned, or I prefer to still say family-owned,” Carrier concludes. “If I’m not pleased with myself today, I have all of tomorrow to try and improve. If you have 1,000 people trying to do that together, it makes it really easy to achieve everything we set out to do.”
