Franchise Guide: Success Stories - Franchising.com

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Success Stories

Americans' love affair with big, chewy cookies was just taking off 32 years ago when Lawrence "Doc" Cohen exited the retail pharmaceutical industry after 15 years to open his first Great American Cookies store in Lafayette, Louisiana, in the late '70s.
  • Debbie Selinsky
  • 4,396 Reads 55 Shares
Glenn Miller's first look at the franchising business came in the early 1990s, when the British Chartered Accountant's brother, an attorney, wound up with six Arby's in Central Illinois. It didn't take a rocket scientist to see some of the problems that needed fixing.
  • John Carroll
  • 6,478 Reads 133 Shares
Jeff Kullman loves his new life in franchising. He's a part of the growing Mooyah Burgers, Fries, & Shakes franchise system and he's opened two restaurants in the past year in the Dallas, Texas area. But life hasn't always been burgers and fries and for Kullman
  • Multi-Unit Franchisee
  • 9,223 Reads 1,023 Shares
For more than 20 years Rick Huffman and his two partners--Sam Catanese and Marc Williams--have been building things. They've developed shopping centers, hotels, apartment complexes, a large stock of affordable housing units, and Branson Landing, a $400 million mixed-use project in Branson, Mo.
  • John Carroll
  • 6,585 Reads 2 Shares
Subodh Patel got his start in franchising during the great Texas downturn of the 1980s. By the late 1980s, the savings-and-loan debacle had spawned the federal Resolution Trust Corporation, which in turn became an overnight bazaar for cut-rate, distressed properties that had to be sold fast.
  • John Carroll
  • 11,690 Reads 2 Shares
Joshua Burton grew up minutes away from the Cherry Hill Mall in Southern New Jersey. In the late 90s, he used to hang out in the food court, where the first-ever Saladworks location still operates today. Burton identified with the Saladworks concept and brand, and watched the franchise thrive throughout his adolescence. When he decided to go into business for himself, it was an easy choice - Saladworks. Today he has three successful locations to show for it, and he hasn't even turned 30 yet.
  • Multi-Unit Franchisee
  • 6,294 Reads 55 Shares
Greg Cutchall never expected to get into the restaurant business. As a youth growing up in Omaha, Nebraska, he saw how tough the business was on his father.
  • Multi-Unit Franchisee
  • 12,985 Reads 1 Shares
One evening in 1982, Iris Cohn's husband, Dick, came home and told the family he wanted to open a Taco Bell restaurant in the Chicago area. So the couple took their daughter, Jennifer, to one of the restaurants, where they proceeded to order one of every item on the menu. "We were hooked," she recalls. Putting everything on the line, the Cohns became the first Taco Bell franchisees in the Chicago metro area, growing steadily over the years to become one of the brand's largest franchisees.
  • Debbie Selinsky
  • 10,298 Reads 2 Shares
Jason Mann learned early that a career in advertising sales could get you just so far in life. And that wasn't far enough for him. So in 1999, at the age of 30, Mann stepped out of his sales role and joined forces with his father to enter the franchising business.
  • John Carroll
  • 4,102 Reads 11 Shares
Just like in professional sports, a Most Valuable Player award is carefully and selectively bestowed on only a handful of the very best players. These players are unique and possess a drive to perform and win that goes beyond what most of their contemporaries can muster. This is the kind of individual selected annually for the Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine MVP Awards.
  • Multi-Unit Franchisee
  • 6,094 Reads 57 Shares
Tom Kazbour doesn't believe the secret to success lies in studying the ABCs of business. He believes new franchisees can whiz on past most of the alphabet and focus on the letter "V."
  • Debbie Selinsky
  • 15,009 Reads 1 Shares
Angry Crab Shack
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Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine today announced the winners of the annual MVP (Most Valuable Player) Awards. These awards honor successful franchisees who have demonstrated outstanding performance in building their businesses, growing their brands, and serving their communities.
  • PRESS RELEASE
  • 5,272 Reads 12 Shares
Pierre Panos, a South African native of Greek descent, leaves little to chance. When the violence in his country became too dangerous in the early 1990s, Panos--a former Coopers & Lybrand accountant who'd followed his father into the restaurant and real estate industries--wanted to emigrate to a country where he and his family could be safe and settle for good.
  • Debbie Selinsky
  • 13,437 Reads 5 Shares
Multi-unit franchising is one thing. Multi-concept franchising is something else entirely. Nevertheless, it's a place--and a choice--that many franchisees love, and where they excel. These determined operators look for growth opportunities and potential across several concepts, sometimes in wildly different sectors. The multi-concept franchising model offers power in numbers (units, brands, territory, and income potential), as well as the security of spreading their risk across different concepts in a diversified portfolio.
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 9,051 Reads 1,023 Shares
The idea of operating a Taco Bell restaurant first came to Iris Cohn one evening in 1982. That's when her husband, Dick, came home and told the family he wanted to open a Taco Bell in the Chicago area. So the couple took their daughter, Jennifer, to one of the restaurants, where they proceeded to order one of every item on the menu. "We were hooked," she recalls. Putting everything on the line, the Cohns became the first Taco Bell franchisees in the Chicago metro area, growing steadily over the years to become one of the brand's largest franchisees.
  • Debbie Selinsky
  • 5,606 Reads 55 Shares
By now everyone is familiar with the Domino's Pizza "turnaround" campaign that's been all over the airwaves. The brand created a high profile marketing campaign that addressed negative consumer attitudes about its pizza by embracing the criticism and showing consumers that the brand was listening. The project has been an overwhelming success for the 9,000-store chain and president and CEO J. Patrick Doyle will offer an insider's look at the campaign from soup to nuts when he keynotes the 2011 Multi-Unit Franchising Conference in Las Vegas April 27-29.
  • Multi-Unit Franchisee
  • 5,419 Reads 8 Shares
When Indianapolis native Greg Willman and his friend Phil Salsbery talked years ago about forming a small investment company or owning and operating franchise concepts, they consciously omitted the restaurants category. "Neither of us knew anything about the food industry or had any experience in it," recalls Willman, who had worked in marketing and product development at large pharmaceutical, chemical, and medical device corporations
  • Debbie Selinsky
  • 4,899 Reads 61 Shares
When Indianapolis native Greg Willman and his friend Phil Salsbery talked years ago about forming a small investment company or owning and operating franchise concepts, they consciously omitted the restaurants category. "Neither of us knew anything about the food industry or had any experience in it," recalls Willman, who had worked in marketing and product development at large pharmaceutical, chemical, and medical device corporations.
  • Debbie Selinsky
  • 9,126 Reads 1 Shares
Gary Hughes turned 50 and decided he'd had enough of the corporate executive life. Based in the Seattle area at the time, he also decided he'd seen enough big city congestion to last a lifetime. Hughes soon found a picturesque, midsized town to call home and moved to Clarkston, Wash., pop. 50,000. "I used to say that we're so far out into the boondocks it's 120 miles to the nearest freeway," says Hughes gleefully.
  • John Carroll
  • 4,249 Reads 31 Shares
In 1980, Bob Chase was in his early 20s, with a small family and not much money. He was barely able to start his first franchise, a Dry-Chem carpet cleaning operation, from a then-fledgling franchisor. But Chase wasn't the kind of young man to let a few little things like that stop him from building his own business from the ground up.
  • John Carroll
  • 9,361 Reads 1,061 Shares
Like many successful and charismatic people, Elena Donahue punctuates her speaking with exclamation points. "Dream big! Focus small!" she encourages the staff at OceDon Restaurant Management in Castle Rock, Colo., and to fellow volunteers at the Mile High Chapter of the American Red Cross.
  • Debbie Selinsky
  • 4,236 Reads 18 Shares
Dogtopia
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Dogtopia
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Dogtopia
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On the surface, franchise corporate executive appears to enjoy a comfortable, prestigious, and satisfying life. They often work in or head up a department brimming with resources and personnel, and the corporate perks aren't bad either. It's a life that can be seen in stark contrast to the often hardscrabble existence of the multi-unit franchisee who has borrowed money to open, invests sweat equity, and works long hours just to keep the business running and the cash flowing. Yet, despite this perceived contrast, some franchise executives chuck the corporate "good life" and set out into the franchisee frontier with their own set of hopes and dreams.
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 8,998 Reads 235 Shares
Jason Mann learned early that a career in advertising sales could get you just so far in life. And he wanted to go much, much further. So in 1999, at the age of 30, Mann stepped out of his sales role and joined forces with his father to enter the franchising business.
  • John Carroll
  • 15,053 Reads 1 Shares
Gary Hughes turned 50 and decided he'd had enough of the corporate executive life. Based in the Seattle area at the time, he also decided he'd seen enough big city congestion to last a lifetime. Hughes soon found a picturesque, midsized town to call home and moved to Clarkston, Wash., pop. 50,000. "I used to say that we're so far out into the boondocks it's 120 miles to the nearest freeway," says Hughes gleefully.
  • John Carroll
  • 7,059 Reads 148 Shares
Gina Puente learned about hard work, tenacity, and the power of cash at the feet of her father, "working" in his office equipment business from the age of eight... when she wasn't busy with commercials and pageants.
  • Debbie Selinsky
  • 5,486 Reads 181 Shares
Overcoming obstacles and facing adversity will be part of the game plan when Sean Tuohy keynotes at the upcoming Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine Multi-Unit Franchising Conference in Las Vegas in April.
  • Multi-Unit Franchisee
  • 4,713 Reads 72 Shares
The remarkable change in his life is not lost on John Betz. It seems one day he was wearing a three-piece suit and hopping a private jet to meet with telecommunications industry clients, and the next thing he knew he was wearing shorts and rolling pretzel dough behind the counter of his first Auntie Anne's Pretzels.
  • Debbie Selinsky
  • 8,668 Reads 1 Shares
When Emir Lopez was ready to open his first Domino's Pizza store, he could have done it anywhere. But after working his way out of the James Weldon Johnson Project in East Harlem, New York, Emir decided the best place to open that store was right in the neighborhood he had come from.
  • Multi-Unit Franchise
  • 4,006 Reads 32 Shares
When Anil Yadav hears people talk about the United States as the land of opportunity, he takes pride in the fact that his life since emigrating from India has been a testament to the promise implicit in that phrase.
  • John Carroll
  • 23,625 Reads 6 Shares
When Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans five years ago, Glenn Mueller already was a grizzled veteran of the Gulf Coast hurricane season. Being a franchisee carries some special challenges for anyone who operates in the region, and Katrina put all of his considerable skills as one of the country's top Domino's franchisees to the test.
  • John Carroll
  • 7,709 Reads 393 Shares
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