Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine Issue II, 2016 | Page 22

MULTI

BRAND
“We try to stay local. We work in the community
and invest in the community and use local vendors.”
MANAGEMENT

Business philosophy: Be persistent.

What I need from vendors: Good customer service and competitive prices.

Management method or style: I simply hire the best people I can.
Greatest challenge: Maintaining good numbers.

Have you changed your marketing strategy in response to the
economy? How? Yes, by using more social media.

How do others describe you? Driven.

How is social media affecting your business? We’re trending up.

One thing I’m looking to do better: Train the family to take over.

How do you hire and fire? We hire good people and fire after giving three
strikes before they’re out.

How I giv e my team room to innovate and experiment: Tell them
their goal, and then expect them to execute.
How close are you to operations? Fairly.

How do you train and retain? We give good people goals and support
them.

What are the two most important things you rely on from your
franchisor? A good image and strong marketing—like the Golden Corral ad,
“Best Buffet in the USA” with Jeff Foxworthy.

Fastest way into my doghouse: Lying, cheating, stealing.

first brand. Because I was in a small area,
I couldn’t do a large number of the same
brand. I had to have small numbers of a
lot of different brands.”
The simplest of his brands to operate (and he doesn’t consider any of them
easy) is his own brand, Flapjack’s Pancake
Cabin, “because 80 percent of all the ingredients or sales are based on 20 items.
It’s the easiest, but it’s not that easy. You
can really mess up breakfast, I can tell you
right now,” he says.
The most complex is Golden Corral
with its buffet, because all of it is done
from scratch, says Collier. “There’s so much
prep and just a lot of loving care that goes
into it. That’s why it does so well—because
there’s so much effort and concern put into
it. And there are a huge number of options.”

How do you deal with problem employees? By first coaching and then
giving them three strikes.

Collier says he generally doesn’t share
employees and managers across brands.
“Most are so specialized that we want to
keep key employees in the one they’re affiliated with. We do have several managers who are cross-trained among brands,
and we have so many employees—about
1,000 during season from Easter through
New Year’s—that if a disaster happened,
we could still offer fast, friendly service,
hot food that should be hot and cold food
that should be cold. It’s persistence and
following the basics,” he says.
He has continued the family business
tradition with his daughters, both of whom
worked in his restaurants from an early
age. Lori Collier, his elder daughter, works
in finance and operations. Elise CollierMassey, his younger daughter, works in

human resources and public relations. Her
husband, Beau Massey, works in operations
with CEO Cary Zimmerman.
Today Collier, at 60 an avid hiker who
loves the area’s 900 trails, says he’s tried
to retire twice. “I know they could do it
without me, but I guess it was me trying
to wiggle my way back in,” he says.
His newest challenge is to build his first
out-of-state restaurant: an Old Chicago
Pizza & Taproom franchise in the Myrtle
Beach, S.C., area. “That area has a similar
tourist market and demographics to ours,”
he says. “I’ve been thinking about going
outside the state for 10 or 15 years, and so
we took this opportunity. In addition to that
Old Chicago Pizza in Garden City, South
Carolina, we’re going to open a Flapjack’s
Pancake Cabin there.”

BOTTOM LINE
Annual revenue: $30 million-plus.

What are the best sources for capital expansion? Banks.

2016 goals: Opening restaurants out of state.

Experience with private equity, local banks, national banks, other
institutions? Why/why not? We try to stay local. We work in the community and invest in the community and use local vendors, so we borrow in the
community.

Growth meter: How do you measure your growth? By profit and
smooth operations.
Vision meter: Where do you want to be in 5 years? 10 years? I
want to be retired and letting the kids run the business.
How is the economy in your region affecting you, your employees, your customers? Things are good. Everybody’s doing better.

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What are you doing to take care of your employees? Paying them
well.

Are you experiencing economic growth in your market? Yes.

How are you handling rising employee costs (payroll, minimum
wage, healthcare, etc.)? With menu pricing and budgeting.

How do changes in the economy affect the way you do business?
Sevier County (a major tourist area) is pretty much recession-proof.

How do you reward/recognize top-performing employees? Bonuses and advancement.

How do you forecast for your business? By looking at the history of the
numbers and by strong budgeting.

What kind of exit strategy do you have in place? Everything is in
place to transition to the next generation.

MULTI-UNIT FRANCHISEE IS S UE II, 2016

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