Bill Humphries has always followed his passions, and he does it in a big way. Whether it’s restaurants, horses or charities, when Bill commits to something, he’s all in. Now in his 60s, he’s showing no signs of slowing down.
Early in his career, the Fort Wayne native worked in the marketing field in Chicago and New York. While on a business trip, he discovered a Subway restaurant and, intrigued with the concept of fresh, fast food, became the first franchisee in Indiana 40 years ago. Today he’s still involved with overseeing more than 750 Subway shops in Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky. He also began to focus on a different audience; one that sought out a fine dining experience minus the old, stuffy atmosphere of traditional steakhouses. That idea gave birth to the first Eddie Merlot’s, which opened in the Jefferson Pointe shopping center in 2011. Today, as the founder and CEO of Platinum Restaurant Group, he owns 14 Eddie Merlot’s restaurants across the country.
When he’s not traveling for business related to his restaurants, he’s on the road pursuing his other favorite line of work.
“I began breeding horses 32 years ago when my son was around 4 years old. I bought a miniature horse that ended up being a world champion. We grew to about 300 miniature horses and Shetland ponies, and bred 32 world grand champions,” Bill says proudly.
He sold those horses shortly before marrying his wife, Starr, so he could focus primarily on racehorses and Starr could focus on Hunter/Jumpers.
“It was always my dream to breed thoroughbreds and over the last seven years we’ve been doing just that,” says Bill. “I have some of my own offspring that I bred that have been stakes winners. We have a two-year-old filly that ran in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf this year in Del Mar, California. It’s a breeder’s dream to have produced an entry in the Breeders’ Cup, which hosted the 200 best horses in the world for 2021. It’s also a breeder’s dream to have an entry or the winner of the Kentucky Derby. We have a colt that we bred that already has a few qualifying Derby points for the 2022 Kentucky Derby. The Derby trial is tough, so we will see how he progresses.”
Starr and her daughter breed and raise Hunter/Jumpers. “My daughter is the national champion on one of her horses, Moonwalk. She’s a beautiful horse,” adds Starr. “We travel to Ocala in the winter and we have two trainers that come down and live with us for three months, and we show the horses.” Starr and her daughter travel nine months of the year primarily to Florida, Michigan, Kentucky and the east coast.
While they spend a lot of time in Florida and Starr’s resident state of Michigan, Bill says he’ll always call Fort Wayne home. His son and one-and-a-half-year-old grandson, Winston, live here along with cherished friends who they enjoy spending time with. It’s also a community he feels strongly about giving back to.
“When we met, Starr started taking me to Make-A-Wish events in her hometown of Grand Rapids. I said, ‘Why do we not have anything like this in Fort Wayne?’ I set out to start a chapter,” Bill says. Eddie Merlot’s is the primary sponsor of an annual Make-A-Wish gala, which has raised several hundred thousand dollars for the organization that grants wishes to terminally ill children and their families.
“It feels good to support that,” says Bill. “Starr also recently coordinated a ladies’ luncheon that brought in $40,000.”
“We want to do all we can to continue to grow those fundraisers and make an even bigger difference,” says Starr.
