On May 20, 1927, J. Willard Marriott and a business partner opened a nine-stool A&W root beer stand on 14th Street in Washington, D.C. Two weeks later, Marriott married Alice Sheets, and the newlyweds were soon running the business together. Washington summers are hot, and cold root beer sold well.

Then fall came. Nobody wants an ice-cold root beer in November, and sales dropped. A seasonal business with one product was facing months of very little income. Instead of waiting for summer, the Marriotts changed what they sold. They added hot food, including barbecued beef sandwiches, tacos and tamales, and renamed the stand The Hot Shoppe. Customers came back for lunch and dinner all year. By 1929 the business was incorporated as Hot Shoppes, Inc., and it grew into a chain of family restaurants.

The next turn came from watching customers. One Hot Shoppe sat near an airport in Washington, and Marriott noticed travelers stopping in to buy food and carry it onto their flights. He saw an opportunity. In 1937, Marriott started a service delivering boxed lunches directly to airlines, which he called In-Flite. It’s widely credited as one of the first airline catering operations.

Twenty years later, the company made its biggest move yet. In 1957 it opened the Twin Bridges Marriott Motor Hotel in Arlington, Virginia, near the Pentagon and Washington National Airport. That was the start of the hotel business the Marriott name is known for today. By 1985 the company had about 143 hotels and resorts, roughly 1,400 restaurants and $4.5 billion in annual revenue.

None of those moves required a brilliant new idea out of nowhere. Each one came from paying attention to a problem in front of them: a slow season, a customer habit, a location full of travelers.