Repeat Business
When your franchise is a roaring success, what's the next step?
In 1987, just three years after taking a cook position with a
Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits on the south side of Chicago,
John Brodersen got his father to cosign for the $800,000 loan he
needed to open his own location. Brodersen knew he wanted to be a
business owner, but he wasn't prepared for the response when he
opened. "On the second day, the drive-thru was 50 cars
deep," he recalls. "The McDonald's got upset because
the traffic was blocking their entrance."
Business was booming. The location generated enough cash in the
first three days to secure all the Milwaukee territory Broderson
wanted. And though he never planned to open multiple locations, the
buzz his store created forced him to act quickly. "With all
the investors milling around, I knew if I didn't do something,
someone else would," he says.
Brodersen opened five stores in his first three years in
business, but not everything went as smoothly as he hoped. "I
expanded too fast, and my management wasn't able to keep up
with me. I had to scale back. I closed one store and sold one. I
went back down to three, because the quality suffered and
everything was going haywire." After downsizing to three
stores, Broderson didn't attempt to expand again for three
years until a good management team was in place and operations were
trunk-tight.
Content Continues Below
His discipline and commitment to investing the time upfront to
build a quality business not only earned him recognition in the
forms of the franchisee of the year and best operations awards, but
also leveraged Brodersen to the point where he could remove himself
from the hands-on managerial role and strictly focus on expansion.
His former single-unit mentality is long gone. "My goal is to
have 100 stores," he says. "I plan for it and visualize
it in my mind every single day."
Matthew R. Carreon is a freelance writer from the greater Los
Angeles area.