Growth Articles

A new look for a coffee brand, a new growth specialist for two Latino concepts, and deals, deals, deals for several new and established franchisors. Gloria Jean’s brews up a more sophisticated look Gloria Jean’s Coffee has opened a new prototype that includes such upscale touches as a maitre ‘d, a gift shop, and a display of various types of whole coffee beans.

If you weren’t scared of Obamacare before going into an NRA session on healthcare reform, you were terrified when you left. A panel that included industry giants Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, Brinker International and Outback parent OSI Restaurant Partners detailed the massive cost increases each is confronting due to the new healthcare reform law’s requirements and their inability to figure out exactly how to respond. At least for LEYE, the best thing to do may be to do nothing and incur whatever penalties come from noncompliance.

A number of industry veterans try new brands in this week's roundup of news relating to growth chain franchisees and franchisors. Corner Bakery signs Denny’s zees to 22-unit deal Corner Bakery has franchised 22 units in New England to Denny’s franchisees Glenn and Tina Beattie. The deal calls for the husband and wife team to open the stores in Rhode Island and Connecticut over the next eight years.

In the late 1990s a group of Pacific Northwest wheat farmers took stock of a bitter reality. They were shipping product to far off, overseas commodity markets, where they had no control over falling prices. And the demands of that market forced them to overtax their fields; they were losing topsoil at an alarming rate. Their families had farmed those Northwest fields for generations, but they realized they could be the last. They turned to Hot Lips Pizza and Grand Central Baking Company, two Portland chains, for help.

At first glance, Bill Flagg and Michael Farello seem to have little in common. A million bucks is a big investment for Flagg, who puts it into fledgling E-commerce startups. Farello is a partner in a $2.5 billion private equity firm that focuses on mid-sized consumer product companies. But despite differences in size and sectors, they share a common philosophy, which they call Conscious Capitalism. They seek out companies whose loyalties are broader than just to their stockholders, and they argue that such a business model offers advantages over the standard one.