{"id":1740,"date":"2026-06-15T07:05:56","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T07:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=1740"},"modified":"2026-06-15T07:05:56","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T07:05:56","slug":"how-utahs-burger-king-king-became-the-king-of-giving-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=1740","title":{"rendered":"How Utah\u2019s Burger King king became the king of giving back"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

This coming Friday, June 19 \u2014 2,000 miles and 82 years from his birthplace in Buffalo, New York \u2014 John Gullo will sit down at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office and sign copies of his newly published memoir, \u201cExtraordinary Adventures of an Ordinary Man.\u201d <\/p>\n

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Granted, it is not the<\/i> Oval Office. That one remains in the West Wing of the White House. This is a replica, located in the Treehouse Children\u2019s Museum on 22nd Street in downtown Ogden.<\/p>\n

And if it weren\u2019t for John, it wouldn\u2019t be here.<\/p>\n

His American Dream Foundation donated the money to build The Great American Freedom Trail, an Americana exhibit that takes up the museum\u2019s entire second floor. As a kind of Ogden rite of passage, each school year, every fifth grader in Weber County has an opportunity to go on a field trip to visit the Oval Office and sit at the Resolute Desk.<\/p>\n

The museum exhibit is just one of many contributions John has made to his adopted city of Ogden ever since he traded in western New York for northern Utah and drove three-quarters of the way across the country to open a Burger King franchise.<\/p>\n

That was half a century ago.<\/p>\n

Born in humbling circumstances in 1944 in Buffalo \u2014 \u201cwhen I was a kid, I was so poor I couldn\u2019t pay attention,\u201d he says \u2014 John was the last of his mother Rose\u2019s six children, all of them delivered before she was 20. His father left when he was 6. He grew up on the streets of an Italian neighborhood swarming with \u201cwiseguys and cannoli.\u201d College was never on the radar. John likes to say he graduated with a \u201cbachelor in arts from the University of Hardknocks, Buffalo, New York.\u201d<\/p>\n

After working for a grocery store chain in New York, his big break came in 1971, when he joined a company with ambitious national expansion plans called Burger King. After working up to a district manager position on the East Coast, he and a partner were given the opportunity to open franchises of their own in a place John had barely heard about, let alone seen: Utah. They opened the state\u2019s second Burger King (the first was in St. George) in Logan in 1977, followed the next year by a store in the Ogden suburb of Riverdale.<\/p>\n

Over the next two decades, at a rate of more than one a year, John opened franchises in Utah, Wisconsin and Arizona \u2014 including the first-ever BK connected to a gas station in Hurricane, Utah. By the turn of the millennium, Gullo owned more than 50 Burger Kings.<\/p>\n

Then he decided to sell them off \u2014 and, with no loss in enthusiasm, turn his attention to philanthropy. The Burger King king became the king of giving back.<\/p>\n

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In Ogden, the first indication the city had as to just how serious John was about doing things for his community came in 2001, when he started the Hot Rock\u2019n 4th.<\/p>\n

Deeming it unacceptable that Ogden didn\u2019t have a proper Fourth of July celebration, John single-handedly organized an extravaganza with entertainment, food, a demolition derby and a massive fireworks show \u2014 and invited everyone to attend. Over a 15-year period, the Hot Rock\u2019n 4th grew until it was held at the Weber State stadium and 33 charities were involved.<\/p>\n

He was just getting started. Under the umbrella of the American Dream Foundation \u2014 the nonprofit he set up with seed money from his business success \u2014 over the course of the past quarter-century he has thrown his philanthropy behind dozens of good causes, including but not limited to the aforementioned Treehouse Children\u2019s Museum, the American Fallen Fire Memorial, Enable Industries for people with disabilities, Prevent Child Abuse, the Children\u2019s Justice Center, Youth in Transition, the Ogden Police Department Let\u2019s Play Program and the Christmas House Box. <\/p>\n

Over, during and in between all that, he was a pioneer in introducing the sport of pickleball to the Ogden area. He\u2019d discovered the game while recovering from quintuple bypass heart surgery in St. George in 2008. Crediting pickleball with helping him lose 100 pounds and saving his life, when he returned to Ogden he took the lead in getting courts built throughout the area. In addition, he started the Professional Pickleball Federation and the Tournament of Champions, a national event with prize money from his own pocket. That effort was instrumental in his induction into the national Pickleball Hall of Fame in 2024.<\/p>\n

All this, and plenty more, is in \u201cExtraordinary Adventures of an Ordinary Man,\u201d which John wrote with the help of Bridget Cook-Burch (the book is available at johnagullo.com and on Amazon).<\/p>\n

In the book\u2019s acknowledgments, John explains what prompted him to pen his memoir:<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter I\u2019d checked off a good number of life boxes \u2014 building businesses, dodging disasters, doing some good in the world \u2014 a surprising number of people began telling me I should write my life story,\u201d he writes. \u201cEither they saw value in it \u2026 or they just wanted proof that half of it actually happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Opinion: We fight for every drop of water. But we\u2019re overlooking a wellspring of health in faith<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Gullo and his American Dream Foundation have helped Ogden area in numerous ways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-west"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Utah\u2019s Burger King king became the king of giving back - American Movers Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=1740\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Utah\u2019s Burger King king became the king of giving back - American Movers Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"John Gullo and his American Dream Foundation have helped Ogden area in numerous ways.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=1740\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"American Movers Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-15T07:05:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanmovershub.com\\\/?p=1740#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanmovershub.com\\\/?p=1740\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanmovershub.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/b68c8483906c0d2987f271455f0177af\"},\"headline\":\"How Utah\u2019s Burger King king became the king of giving back\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-15T07:05:56+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanmovershub.com\\\/?p=1740\"},\"wordCount\":893,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanmovershub.com\\\/?p=1740#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanmovershub.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/477d61389443c79c559d652d2e61e9b8.avif\",\"articleSection\":[\"The West\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/americanmovershub.com\\\/?p=1740#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanmovershub.com\\\/?p=1740\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanmovershub.com\\\/?p=1740\",\"name\":\"How Utah\u2019s Burger King king became the king of giving back - 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