Early Tuesday morning, a car crashed into a local McDonald’s restaurant in Seaside, California, about 5 miles from where I live. The McDonald’s caught on fire and collapsed. Fortunately all the employees were able to get out safely.

The owner, Landon Hofman, owns 7 local McDonald’s franchises. Here’s a clip from a local news story about how he reacted:

On Tuesday Hofman found jobs for all 42 of the employees from the Seaside store at his other locations.

“I have spent all morning long now taking all the employees from this store and redistributing them to the other stores because they’ve got bills to pay and mouths to feed,” he said.

This illustrates two things: (1) his compassion and (2) the value of diversification. On (2), if he had owned only one franchise, this would have been hard to do.