USA TODAY International Edition
A business deal spawns a friendship
Auto dealer and ‘ regular guy’ Wahlberg find success, too
Michigan car dealer Jay Feldman nervously sat in a restaurant in Hingham, Massachusetts. It was a hot day in August nearly four years ago. He was there for a business lunch, which would normally have been routine for him, but not this time.
This lunch was with one of the biggest movie stars in the world.
Hingham is about 22 miles south of Boston and hugs the Massachusetts Bay. It is home to the original Wahlburgers restaurant. The man who had invited Feldman to lunch there was Mark Wahlberg himself, who brought along his mother.
“In the first five seconds, I was like: Wow, this is kind of crazy,” Feldman said of his initial meeting jitters. “But one thing you find about Mark is that he’s very disarming. He’s a regular guy.”
The two met to discuss the idea of Feldman teaming up with Wahlberg to bring a Wahlburgers to Michigan. But this lunch was only the second time Feldman and Wahlberg had ever met. Their first encounter, a few weeks before, was a brief handshake when Wahlberg was in Detroit filming “Transformers.”
Little did either of them know that that handshake would lead to a multimillion- dollar empire together that includes several restaurants and car dealerships. Along the way, they have developed a deep friendship, too.
“If there’s something I’m interested in, I gravitate towards the people who are in that space,” Wahlberg told the Detroit Free Press while in Germany shooting his next movie, an action- adventure called “Uncharted” due out next summer.
“Jay’s experience in the car business attracted me, even though we got into restaurants first,” Wahlberg said. “But I’ve always been a big car guy and he’s very reputable. He’s just a good guy, a great family man. We just hit it off right away.”
‘ A cop or a criminal’
Feldman and Wahlberg own three General Motors dealerships and a recreational vehicle store in Ohio, five Wahlburgers restaurants in Michigan, two in Ohio and two in Georgia, and they are investors in F45 Training, which specializes in high- intensity group workouts.
Feldman is well- established in metro Detroit with nine dealerships that employ 799 full- time and part- time employees. His five Chevrolet stores sell the most Chevrolet vehicles in Michigan, GM said.
As for Wahlberg, well he’s an A- list Hollywood actor who has starred in hit films such as “The Departed,” “The Perfect Storm” and “Boogie Nights” to name a few. He also was an executive producer on the HBO show “Entourage.”
Wahlberg called the connection he has with Feldman a “brotherly bond.” They are the same age, 49. Both are married with children: Feldman has two and Wahlberg has four. They possess a compulsive motivation to succeed. And, despite their distance – Feldman lives in Oakland County and Wahlberg in Beverly Hills, California – the two visit each other several times a year, travel together and communicate almost daily.
Yet, the two men started life on divergent paths with markedly different upbringings.
Feldman grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and Waterford. As the son of a successful car dealer, he was comfortably middle class and he became the first in his family to graduate from col
lege.
Wahlberg, on the other hand, grew up in the tough Dorchester neighborhood of Boston on a fast track to trouble. He is the youngest of nine children in a working- class family in which his father, a Teamster, drove a truck, Wahlberg said. The young Wahlberg made some poor life choices early on, and he never graduated from college.
“I grew up in a rough neighborhood where pretty much everyone became a cop or a criminal,” said Wahlberg, whose troubled youth has been well reported, including jail time for assault.
Disciplined lifestyle
But Wahlberg said that once he focused on doing the right thing, fortune followed. Now he leans on his rocky past as motivation to follow a disciplined life.
At 4 a. m. daily, Wahlberg does a vigorous workout that includes “swinging a 150- pound. kettlebell around like it’s nothing,” said Feldman, who has worked out with Wahlberg and described it as “crazy.”
Religion also is a big part of Wahlberg’s life. He has Bible study at the same time daily, and a priest often visits him on movie sets. Wahlberg said he attends a church in Birmingham each time he’s in Michigan, some times with Feldman in tow.
“He came from nothing, and to take his life from what it was, to what it is, is so interesting,” Feldman said.
Both men are charitable. Earlier this year, Feldman and Wahlberg donated 1,100 electronic tablets to Beaumont Royal Oak, Ascension Providence Southfield and Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center for children with cancer.
Anytime Wahlberg is in Detroit, he will quietly visit kids with cancer at the Beaumont pediatric ward.
“The inspiration I get from their strength and courage is really something,” Wahlberg said. “It’s something I should be doing, and we will continue to do more of it in the future.”
‘ Hi, nice to meet you’
Yet, when it comes to business, both Feldman and Wahlberg have resolute ambition.
“No matter how much success I achieve, I’m still as hungry and driven as I was when I started out,” Wahlberg said.
His success in movies and business comes down to one thing: “The work ethic. It’s the amount of time and energy and effort I put into everything I do.”
It was a sense of Wahlberg’s aspirations that drew Feldman to their business lunch four years ago.
That summer, Wahlberg was staying at the Townsend Hotel in Birmingham while filming “Transformers.” He would eat dinner at Nino Cutraro’s Bella Piatti so often that Cutraro invited Wahlberg to his home for a barbeque. Cutraro also invited his pal Feldman.
“When I got there, Mark was leaving, so he shook my hand as he was walking out the door,” Feldman said. “He was nice, but it was, ‘ Hi, nice to meet you.’ Then, a couple days later I was watching ‘ Wahlburgers’ on A& E. I called Nino up and said, ‘ Did you know Mark has a show about the restaurants?’ ”
Feldman and Cutraro talked about bringing a Wahlburgers to Michigan, with Feldman as an investor. Cutraro called Wahlberg to pitch the idea.
But after his lunch with Wahlberg, Feldman – a car dealer since his youth – got cold feet about the restaurant business. The first Wahlburgers to open in Greektown was a partnership only between Cutraro and Wahlberg.
“Then Nino started telling me about doing a Wahlburgers in Cleveland and I thought I might want to get involved in that,” Feldman said. “Mark called me and said, ‘ I hear you want to be involved in the Cleveland location?’ I said, ‘ Yes.’ He said, ‘ That’s fine with me.’ ”
The three men opened the Cleveland location in 2017. Today, Feldman is an investor in all three Wahlburgers in Michigan. He also invested in two of the restaurants in Ohio and two in Georgia. The Michigan restaurants employ 185 full- time and part- time employees.
Two car salesmen
But the restaurant business was Wahlberg’s brother Paul’s dream that “I wanted to make happen,” Wahlberg said. His personal interest, beyond acting, was in cars.
“One of my first jobs was as a towtruck driver,” Wahlberg said. “It was at G& L Auto Repair in Dorchester, Massachusetts. I was driving tow trucks and doing mechanics. My dad was a Teamster member and drove trucks, so that’s always been a big part of my life.”
By 16, Wahlberg had his first entrepreneurial inclination when he started buying used cars, then flipping them.
“I literally changed cars 18 times that first year I got my license,” said Wahlberg, who owns a Chevrolet Suburban SUV and a 2020 Corvette.
Similarly in 1987, at about age 15, Feldman was selling cars, too, at his dad’s store, Jay Chevrolet. A tiny store in Milford, Jay Chevrolet sold about 25 new cars a month then. But the young Feldman was a prodigious salesman. He found his calling and headed off to Northwood University in Midland. In 1992 he earned a bachelor of arts degree in automotive marketing and management.
He became a finance manager at Jay Chevrolet, but the store was struggling. His dad, Marty Feldman, now 80, wanted to sell it. But Feldman was undeterred.
“It was my first management job and I’ve always liked a challenge,” Feldman said. “I paid off Motors Holding. It took me a good year to get it successful.”
In 1992, Jay Chevrolet’s revenue was $ 25 million. Today, Feldman Automotive group’s total revenue is $ 1.2 billion, he said. That includes the dealerships he owns with Wahlberg.
By 1996, Feldman moved Jay Chevrolet store to its current location in Highland Township, Michigan. Today, it’s called Feldman Chevrolet- Highland.
Putting Chevys on the road
General Motors noticed Feldman’s business acumen, and in 2003, it awarded Feldman a new store, which he opened two years later in New Hudson.
In 2008, he partnered with his dad and sister, Marla, in Marty Feldman Chevrolet in Novi. Today, it is called Feldman Chevrolet of Novi. In July, it was the second- largest Chevy store in the country for new car sales.
Feldman’s group of Chevrolet stores sells one of every 70 Chevy vehicles in the country, about 1% of all U. S. Chevrolet sales, a Chevrolet spokesman said.
When asked whom he considers his biggest rival, he said: “Nobody. We compete with ourselves. We slice and dice and look at every metric every day.”
He said, ‘ Yes’
Feldman’s success in the car business intrigued Wahlberg.
So after Feldman had invested in Wahlburgers restaurant in 2017, Wahlberg invited Feldman to come to Boston again, this time to talk cars between filming scenes for “Daddy’s Home 2.”
“He was fascinated about the car business,” Feldman said. “I was joking with him and said, ‘ We should buy a car dealership together.’ He said, ‘ Yeah we should.’ I said, ‘ Would you put your name on it?’ He said, ‘ Yes.’ ”
Feldman instantly knew the partnership and Wahlberg’s name on the building would be a home run. So in December of that year Feldman headed to Columbus, Ohio, on a tip from a dealership real estate broker, to look at a Chevrolet store. The broker told him, “It’s challenged but could be successful with a good operator,” words of inspiration to Feldman.
Wahlberg was serious, and the two started researching the deal in early 2018. They closed on the store in November 2018 and opened Mark Wahlberg Chevrolet in Columbus. The resulting media coverage received 475 million views, including being featured on the TV shows “Ellen” and “Good Morning America.”
“It’s pretty crazy,” Feldman said. “You’ve seen sports figures that own dealerships, but nobody has ever had an A- list actor with their name on it.”
A great partnership
When Feldman pauses to reflect on his partnership with Wahlberg, he is a bit overcome with how quickly the two have turned ideas into reality since first meeting in 2016.
“I don’t know if it’s an empire just yet, but we’re working on it,” Feldman said. “It’s certainly been more going on in a short period of time than I ever would have imagined.”
Wahlberg visits his dealerships as often as possible between his hectic film schedule. He typically spends the most time in the service lane, given his background as a mechanic.
“I’ve had that entrepreneurial approach for quite some time. In film and television, we wanted to create our own production company,” Wahlberg said. “Anything I do, I’m really hands- on with.”
Asked which is better, being a movie star or a businessman, Wahlberg pauses for a moment, then answers with a chuckle, “It depends on the day. In the middle of a pandemic with all our restaurants and dealerships closed, it’s easier to focus on my day job as an actor and producer.”
Feldman said he and Wahlberg continue to imagine ways to further expand their businesses, though not necessarily for the Detroit area.
“Our brand, the Feldman brand, is so powerful in Michigan, it wouldn’t make sense to bring any more here,” Feldman said. “But we’ve looked at other areas outside of Michigan.”
For example, the two have pitched the idea of a car dealership to another A- list actor, a pal of Wahlberg’s. It could be for “any” brand, Feldman said. He was elusive, saying only, “It’s another person who, like Mark, is extremely well- liked.”
“Every time you have an interaction with someone, you want to make sure they think well of you,” Feldman said. “I have had lots of partnerships and lots of deals and I’ve never had a bad partnership. I’ve always been friends with them. That’s why all this stuff I’m doing with Mark … it’s because we have a great partnership.”