Franchise Interviews

Get ready for the Super Bowl of franchising...Tom Portesy, President of MFV Expositions, and Joel Goldstein, Group Marketing Director. We are also meeting Paul Mann from Fetch Pet Care The Fetch Pet Care Way. Thrive with Fetch! Pet Care - The Pet Care Leader Work with the ones you love - the pets. Fetch! Pet Care offers pet franchise opportunities with a thriving future that gives you incredible freedom, and a career that offers long-term growth and income potential. Fetch! Pet Care is America's largest and most trusted pet sitting and dog walking franchise servicing more than 1,800 cities and towns nationwide and we're constantly growing. We've partnered with some of the largest corporations in America that market our services to millions of their employees, customers and members to deliver new business to you. The Fetch! Pet Care brand is rapidly becoming a household name, and you can be part of it. Last year we were voted among 100 of America's lowest risk and low-cost franchises by Entrepreneur Magazine. In addition, Entrepreneur Magazine named us as one of 7 hot businesses that can make you rich! This year we were named to Entrepreneur Magazine's coveted Franchise 500 List. Fetch! Pet Care was also named as one of 20 boom businesses to get into by Small Business Opportunities Magazine.

We are meeting with Dr. Scott Shane, author of Born Entrepreneurs, Born Leaders. This is the first book to review the entire range of scientific literature on genetic effects on organizational behavior and explain in a practitioner-friendly manner, how your DNA affects your workplace behavior. Dr. Scott Shane is the author of over 60 scholarly articles on entrepreneurship and innovation management. Dr. Shane is currently a Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies and a Professor of Economics at Case Western Reserve University.

Home of the World’s Best Margarita Announces Franchise Offering New England’s Beloved Margaritas Mexican Restaurant to Franchise across Atlantic Seaboard. About Margaritas Mexican Restaurants Founded in 1986 by John Pelletier, Margaritas Mexican Restaurants has 19 locations throughout Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshireand Connecticut. From colorful authentic décor to a commitment to community relations through field trips and visiting artist demonstrations, Margaritas provides an atmosphere rich with the culture and flavors of Mexico, offering guests a fun dining adventure in a festive gallery of Mexican art. Margaritas Mexican Restaurants have earned numerous awards and honors, including being named the best Mexican restaurant in both New Hampshire and Connecticut. Margaritas is franchising for the first time The first company-owned restaurant in the plan is set to open in the first quarter of 2010 in Lexington, MA. Most Margaritas Mexican Restaurants range in size from 5,200-7,500 square feet, due to the company’s specialty in doing conversions of existing restaurants which fits their concept. Margaritas has outpaced competitors in the casual dining segment, demonstrating solid unit-level economics fueled by a $2.3 million average unit sales volume, a beverage-to-food sales ratio of 45 percent and a 21.6 percent EBITDAR, which falls into the top tier of its peers. A strategic site-location process, which includes extensive research conducted by Buxton, an industry leader in customer analytics, also contributes to Margaritas’ success.

Sam Ballas, CEO of East Coast Wings and Grill. Sam will be talking with Marty and Don about why East Coast Wings & Grill has enjoyed 24 consecutive quarters of positive same store sales increases despite other restaurants seeing consecutive losses. Committed to family and far different from the norm in the chicken wing segment, Ballas and Kontos took over in 2000, after they noticed that the vast majority of wing concepts focused on pushing alcohol sales to make money. By creating a warm and inviting decor and focusing on families, customers started flocking to the restaurants. In fact,alcohol sales at East Coast Wings & Grill attribute for less than 8.5 percent of total sales, while the wings account for more than 35 percent. Another reason for their success is the diverse menu offerings. The East Coast Wings & Grill menu offers an array of high quality food including wraps, salads, overstuffed sandwiches, burgers and more. While the wings will always be the staple and have won every major chicken wing award in North Carolina, East Coast Wings & Grill differentiates itself from other wing concepts by providing high quality food other than wings. The menu offerings consist of more than 90 percent fresh, never frozen food. ABOUT EAST COAST WINGS East Coast Wings & Grill, a fast growing casual dining chicken wing franchise, has 12 locations in North Carolina and many expected to be opening in 2010. The franchise concept not only caters to the chicken wing lover, which hit previously unseen levels of popularity in 2009 including the sale of more than 13 billion whole chicken wings, by offering 75 different flavors of chicken wings, but also salads, wraps, sandwiches, burgers and more, all using fresh not frozen ingredients.

We are meeting with Geoff Hill, vice president at Roark Capital Group. Roark Capital Group is an Atlanta-based private equity firm that specializes in business and consumer service companies with attractive growth prospects and revenues ranging from $20 million to $1 billion. Roark has acquired 15 franchise/multi-unit brands that collectively have more than 14,000 points of distribution, 2,600 franchisees, and $3.7 billion in system-wide revenues across 50 states and 33 countries. Its franchise portfolio includes such well known brands as Carvel, Cinnabon, Schlotzsky's, Moe's Southwest Grill, Seattle's Best Coffee International, McAlister's Deli, Money Mailer, Fast Signs, Batteries Plus and Primrose Schools. The firm has more than $1.5 billion of equity capital under management.

The Book: Guerrilla Marketing for The Franchisee Many franchisees enter into a franchise business and think owning their own business will be much easier than it really is. Consequently, they often become discouraged from not experiencing the success they thought they signed up for. Other franchisees don't understand marketing and what it actually takes to grow their business. There is a false sense of security thinking that the sales will automatically come because they signed up for a "turn key" system. At the end of the day the success of each franchise business comes down to the operating franchisee. This book teaches business owners how to own their success and failures, what marketing is and what it takes to compete in today's tough business environment. Guerrilla Marketing defines marketing as "every bit of contact you or anyone in your company has with any part of the public. With over 14 Million Books sold worldwide, Guerrilla Marketing is one of the best known marketing brands in history: because it works. We have the pleasure of meeting with Todd Woods, CEO of Guerrilla Marketing Strategies, Inc and Eddie Leonard, Chief Operating Guerilla.

For more than 20 years, enterprising individuals have found success and satisfaction with Unishippers franchise ownership. Today, more than 280+ franchises serve the needs of 75,000 small and mid-sized business customers nationwide by providing individualized shipping solutions that save time, trouble and money. Their franchisees say they enjoy the flexibility, challenge and opportunity that Unishippers provides.

We have the pleasure of meeting with Dan Lockwood, President of Unishippers and Chris Cadigan, owner of Unishippers of Oceanside, NY. Unishippers helps small businesses save time, trouble and money on all their shipping needs. They create a complete, individualized shipping solution for customers and know that one size definitely doesn't fit all and are proud to tailor their solutions to a business’ specific needs. Learn about this growing industry and franchises that demand aggressive/competent sales people to succeed. They will also talk about b2b relationships and how to create long term relationships with customers.

Maaco is “America’s body shop” with nearly 500 franchised locations across the continent boasting systemwide sales that approach $500 million. Maaco provides auto paint and auto body repair services for more than 12,000 vehicles a week and 600,000 a year, more than any other company in North America. The more than 17 million vehicles Maaco has repaired since 1972 could create a traffic jam 15 lanes wide from New York to Los Angeles.

EduFit is a franchised fitness concept providing convenient, appointment-based personal training services to men and women. Different from circuit or group training concepts, EduFit’s certified personal trainers work with up to five clients during a session, with each client following a customized training program based on their particular conditions, needs or weight loss or body-composition goals. The company was launched in Scottsdale, Ariz. In August 1998 and began franchising in April 2009. Currently, EduFit has two locations in Scottsdale and one in Phoenix. They expect to have 25 studios either open or in development by the end of 2010 and 200 locations nationwide within five years. Initial growth is expected to come primarily from single-unit franchise owners.