River’s Edge Ramblings

Our hope is that throughout the year this blog will be able to provide you with both useful tips and valuable insight into the often hectic and hurried world of new store development. Along the way, I'll do my best to keep my personal ramblings to a minimum though the occasional and sometimes comical story may slip out from time to time.
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Back to the Start

Written by Matt on February 13, 2012 — 2 Comments

Hello everyone, we’re back after our little week long hiatus.  Unfortunately, our absence was not due solely to the fact that the Giants actually won the Super Bowl; we at River’s Edge suffered a great loss last week, one that has truly shaken us to our core.  Day by day things are getting better and we are beginning to return to some semblance of normalcy once again.  Please accept our apologies if we have been limited in contact with any of you.  In exceedingly difficult times such as these, it is important to really look inside of ourselves and make sure that we are sticking to our core values and not being swept away with the things in life that really won’t matter much in the long run.  We’ve been taking some time to do just that.

My young son found and brought to me a video many months ago, he began questioning us about the current trends in American agriculture and how animals are kept and treated prior to ‘becoming food’.  How a four year-old learned to effectively navigate an iPad and the World Wide Web is still beyond my wife and I, but when he presented the video to Coldplay’s “The Scientist”, performed hauntingly fantastic by the legendary Willie Nelson, we were truly taken aback.  If you missed it last night on the Grammy’s, Chipotle actually (finally) launched a national television ad spot highlighting the video which follows a pig farmer through his journey of caging and medicating animals to increase yields.  After becoming unhappy with the disturbing realities of industrialized meat production, the farmer (led by Nelson’s chilling chorus) decides to go “back to the start” and focus back on the core values lost through his business decisions.

We’ve talked about Chipotle before here on our blog and often on Twitter, but once again Steve Ells and his creative departments have forced me to sit back and remember that it is far too easy to get swept up in the business side of life and forget to honor and uphold the personal side of life – the really important side.  I am a huge fan of the Chipotle brand, though we have no professional affiliation with them (at least not yet ;-) ), they continue to impress me.  Their commitment to using hormone and antibiotic free meats in their restaurants is outstanding and should be a push to the entire industry to move toward a more humane and sustainable future.  If Chipotle can do it and still remain highly profitable and competitive (did I mention that they have plans to open around 160 new locations in 2012 alone!), then so can your concept.

Give some thought about what you can do to make a change for the better in your day-to-day work and life.  It’s time for some changes here too, we’ve lost a very dear friend whose affect on us will never be forgotten.  Perhaps it’s time we all head back to the start and reevaluate what positive change we can enact today.  What do you think?

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Game On!

Written by Matt on February 3, 2012 — Leave a Comment

In lieu of our normally scheduled New Franchise Friday, we at River’s Edge Project Management have opted to start preparing for the BIG GAME!  Here’s a great article from Entrepreneur.com on pizza and its ties to football to tide you over for a couple days – http://www.entrepreneur.com/slideshow/222726

May the best team win Sunday!  We’ll see you back here next week

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QSR Menu Options?

Written by Matt on February 1, 2012 — Leave a Comment

With the myriad of legislation being handed down from Washington regarding QSR and Fast Casual menu displays, it can be almost overwhelming for an operator to decipher fact from fiction.  There are a ton of differing viewpoints out there on the validity and/or benefit of such legislation (mine included) but the fact of the matter is that like it or not, there are going to be changes made in this facet of owning a restaurant.  What are you doing now to prepare?

Representing a lot of quick-service pizza franchisees, we at River’s Edge PM have seen and heard perhaps more opinions on what this will mean to the bottom line than most.  Pizza takes an unfair hit in the menu war due to the virtually unlimited potential of ingredient combinations possible – how can you put a calorie label on a pizza that could have nothing but cheese or could be loaded down with every topping in the QSR’s arsenal (or any combo in between)?  The easy answer is, you can’t.  But I digress and don’t really want to get into that argument today.  What I do want to hear is how QSR operators (from all concepts, not just pizza) today are instituting proactive changes in their developing and existing locations to lessen the financial burden of costly regulations down the road.

Some of my clients are moving away from the old standard, and static, menu board with the slide in panels and moving into the realm of the digital age.  I’ve seen some pretty neat things done with not much more than your standard LCD TV and a bit of software lately that really makes a huge impact on how a store looks and feels (inside and out).  What are you seeing or doing?  I’d love to discuss what options are available out there.

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Flip a Coin with Papa John’s!

Written by Matt on January 30, 2012 — Leave a Comment

Flip a coin, save the world……or at least call the coin toss right at this Sunday’s Super Bowl XLVI and you could score a free pizza and pop from Papa John’s!  That’s right, as the official Pizza Sponsor of the NFL, Papa John’s is running a pretty unique contest to the masses that flock to their website and enroll in their Papa Rewards program.  Along with the easy-odds contest, John Schnatter (founder, chairman, CEO, etc) has also hired football famed celebrities Jerome Bettis and Peyton Manning to help draw in the crowds.

I won’t get into the specifics of how to enter, but I can bet it’d be pretty straight forward once you visit the quick-serve pizza giant’s website.  You may recall last year’s Papa John’s promo that promised FREE PIZZA if the game went into overtime……boy was that a close call.  With better odds of scoring grub this year – which way are you leaning?  Heads or Tails – Patriots or Giants?

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New Franchise Friday: Zoup! Fresh Soup Company

Written by Matt on January 27, 2012 — Leave a Comment

Living in the often blustery cold and damp Midwest, there are some days when I simply can not warm up no matter what.  Grey skies, rain, snow, sleet, slush, and road construction all blend together to make up typically 5 or so months when staying warm and cozy is on top of everyone’s mind here.  Created in Southfield, MI in 1998 this week’s New Franchise Friday comes back to my home state to celebrate with Zoup! Fresh Soup Company.

Owner & Founder Eric Ershner, after coming from a background in various facets of the food industry, started his first Zoup location in Southfield selling nothing other than soups.  Today the growing chain has a full menu consisting of salads, sandwiches, and to top it off – a rotating list of 100 specialty soups for dine-in or take-out (catering is an option too).  Offering everything from the exotic Mulligatawny, (a curried tomato based chicken soup) to my personal favorite, Chicken Potpie, Zoup found the health conscious foodie niche market before it was so trendy to do so.  They continue to innovate and create tasty combinations to fit into everyone’s dietary choices and needs.

With 41 operating locations, and numbers 42 and 43 coming soon, Zoup made Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top Franchise 500 list for 2012 at spot number 300 (up from 316 the year prior).  Ershner maintains a focus on quality and keeping the customers happy first – the rest according to him in an article written by Judy Kneiszel for QSR Magazine, will “fall into place”.  Quite a mantra to enforce across the franchisee ownership – so far it seems as though Zoup has found a recipe for success.

This is just the kind of unique and powerful company that we like to support.  Best of luck Zoup! Fresh Soup Company in your growth and development for 2012 from us at River’s Edge Project Management!

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Time to spruce up your restaurant?

Written by Matt on January 25, 2012 — Leave a Comment

Ever thought about remodeling any of your QSR or Fast Casual locations?  Remodeling can be a relatively easy way to attract the eyes of customers and to ensure they are impressed with not only your food, but also your location.  Freelance writer, DeAnn Owens, wrote recently in Pizza Today about some of the pros and cons of taking on a remodeling project and the real costs that can be involved.

There will undoubtedly come a time in the life of any concept where the standard décor and design that has been used for some time begins to appear out-dated, or worse, dingy and old.  Under the right set of circumstances though, the savvy owner can initiate a remodel or renovation of those areas of their stores most in need.  Generally, unless your operations are lagging far behind your expectations (and if that is the case, we at River’s Edge PM can’t really help you), the single most important area of your restaurant should be the area where your customer is.  Whether you have an eat-in dining room or you are strictly take-out only, the impression your location makes on the eyes of the customer will directly correlate with the impression you make on their hunger, and their wallets.  Customers want clean and new – so do whatever your budget will allow to give that to them every single time they enter your building.

Remodeling an open-for-business store is a tough proposition – reality TV shows like Gordon Ramsay’s, Kitchen Nightmares, don’t really do a lot of justice to those of us who work in the restaurant construction industry.  Don’t get me wrong, that is still one of my favorite shows but the speed at which the remodels are shown to take place in is pretty unrealistic for a restaurant owner on any sort of budget.  Come to think of it, maybe I should send Chef Ramsay some of our marketing materials – that would certainly be a cool project to work on!  Your remodel will likely take at least a bit longer than an evening, but the success of the project timing and the adherence to the project budget can be solidified by aligning yourself up with a qualified professional who can take over and deliver to you the results that you (and your customers) demand.

Just so happens we at River’s Edge Project Management may know some folks that do just that……drop us a note if you’d like to chat about your options for re-impressing your customer base.

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The Burger King is now also The Delivery King?

Written by Matt on January 23, 2012 — Leave a Comment

Ok, as much as I hate to do it – what would a current events blog covering the QSR industry be if it didn’t include at least one post regarding the new and somewhat controversial topic of Burger King home delivery?  Seriously?  We can now order a Whopper meal and have it delivered right to our doorsteps for a nominal up charge and to top that off – it actually may arrive looking like it is supposed to?  You may be asking yourself, what kind of fantasy world does this guy live in?  No fantasy here – BK delivery is bursting out of roughly ten locations in Maryland and Virginia already, and if these test markets prove to be successful you can bet you’ll be seeing the burger giant driving down your block someday.

While the idea of enabling more Americans to pursue a lifestyle far less than healthy may seem to be against many of our proclaimed values…..it is, but the sheer novelty of this idea is enough to beg some attention.  Fast food delivery service is actually quite popular in many other parts of the world, yet for some reason, it has been slow to take off in America leaving Pizza and the occasional Chinese-food place to rule the quick-serve to your door market.

Personally, I think that the packaging materials and techniques should really be the star of the show.  Think about how your food looks and tastes if you purchase it from a drive thru and then for a vain attempt to keep your car clean you wait the 10-15 minutes until you get home to feast……..um, yeah, it drops that food to a whole new level, right?  Well not with this delivery service!  They have engineered special packaging to separate certain components of the burger to avoid them getting soggy – really ingenious packaging with ‘secret compartments’ for the lettuce, tomato, and top bun!  On top of spiffy packaging, rumor has it that the King has also invested a healthy chunk of change into some pretty scientific heated bags very similar to what a certain pizza giant named after a classic table game uses!  I live in Metro Detroit, so I don’t have the luxury quite yet of trying out this service to see if I can bust the hype but I set off into the great wide web to find someone who has.

Michael S. Rosenwald wrote a great piece for The Washington Post last week reviewing (I believe though a personal taste test) this new QSR phenomenon.   According to Rosenwald, the meal actually arrived in quite a tasty and appealing condition; he was kind enough to snap a photo of the spread:

Look at the trap door for the top half!  Ingenious!  What will they think of next?  Maybe a pack of antacid tablets for desert?  As long as the creepy post-Mascot man doesn’t show up on my doorstep ever, I may just give this a try once they spread out to my area.  To check it out for yourself, go to their online ordering site and see if your area is serviced yet.  Leave a comment below – let us know what you think about Burger King and their delivery service.

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New Franchise Friday: Umami Ko!!!!

Written by Matt on January 20, 2012 — Leave a Comment

This week’s entry into River’s Edge Project Management’s now world famous New Franchise Friday feature has been dishing up artfully prepared burgers based on the literal science of taste.  No really, these guys are making use of something that many people have likely never even heard of.  Enter, Umami Burger……who?  Never heard of them?  That’s because as of current their seven locations are all scattered about Southern California – which means for the rest of us that don’t live in the land of perfect weather and beaches, we’re out of luck for now.

What makes these burgers special?  Well, besides their price tag (they start at $10) is their secret taste. That’s right, I said taste.  Turns out, Umami is actually a term borrowed from Japanese to describe what is now being called – The Fifth Taste.  Alongside long standing primary taste residents, salty – sweet – bitter – and sour, Umami adds a whole new level to one’s perceptions of taste.  There is a whole slew of science that goes into this, so much so that Umami Burger’s website even has links to some sources.  I won’t go any farther into the chemical makeup of taste but there is plenty of great information out there – especially considering this mysterious 5th taste was actually discovered by a guy named Dr. Kikunae Ikeda in 1908!!

Founder and CEO of Umami Burger, Adam Fleischman, came up with all of the recipes on the menu himself.  Completely immersing himself in not only the flavor, but seemingly also the culture that is Umami, Fleischman created a cult-phenomenon wrapped up in a branded bun.  Imagine a burger made from in-house hand ground beef topped with fresh shiitake mushrooms, caramelized onions, roasted tomato, parmesan crisp and finished off with a house made ketchup………wow, I think even some of my vegetarian friends are starting to reconsider!  Anyways, being that I haven’t yet had the pleasure to speak personally with Mr. Fleischman about Umami Burgers development plans, I can’t begin to even speculate if those of us east of the Mississippi River will ever get to experience one of these restaurants (without a 4 hour flight that is).

Why then is River’s Edge Ramblings rambling on and on about a concept that isn’t even franchising?  “I thought this was New Franchise Friday – I want my money back!!!”   Now, now, stop fretting loyal readers.  We here at REPM have some really exciting news for you……get ready – Adam Fleischman has seen the light and has created a quick-service version of his concept, called Umami Ko or U-Ko for the hipsters out there.  Fleischman noted to QSR Magazine that the first unit will open early in 2012 in a Los Angeles neighborhood, but the plan is to launch 150 or so units around the world!  The quick-service U-Ko will serve up much of the same menu items as its fuller serviced big brother company, but will also present us with some new taste creations so we may all one day sit and ponder just what in the world this Umami thing really is, as we are wiping a smear of homemade ketchup and burger juice off of our chins.

Sounds like a fantastic concept to me, one that I’d love to get involved with really!  Hats off to Adam Fleischman and best of luck to Umami Ko from us here at River’s Edge Project Management.  Have a great weekend everybody!

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What your drive thru needs to succeed

Written by Matt on January 18, 2012 — Leave a Comment

What is the one thing that sets a quick-service restaurant apart from almost all other businesses?  The drive thru.  Quite simple in design and function, this rather unique element employed by most QSRs provides a level of convenience for the customer and a level of potential profit boost for the owner not recognized in other aspects of the location.  Sure, there are downsides to a drive thru from a healthy living perspective but let’s face it – they are supremely convenient and sometimes in our busy lives, convenience WILL trump most everything else.

Back in the October 2011 issue of QSR Magazine, regular contributor Daniel P. Smith released a pretty well thought list titled, “100 Ways to Improve Your Drive Thru”.   If you happen to have read through the comments left on the website, you’ll notice a fairly high level of dissension among the posters…….you’ll also notice that really none of them touched upon the points involving design and construction.  Perhaps it’s just our lucky day here at River’s Edge Project Management that we happen to be QSR design and construction consultants – after reviewing Smith’s list, I personally think he nailed quite a few points very well.  I’ll comment on a couple here, but I’d go read the entire list if you’re looking into a drive thru for your next location.

The biggest complaint that I hear from my clients is that their drive thru ends up looking like an afterthought; the design element and planning were possibly not given the time they deserved while focus was placed on the rest of the restaurant.  Number 30 in Smith’s list expresses this reality and cautions owners to avoid not giving their drive thru design the highest attention.  Often times our franchisee clients seek our guidance in figuring out how to add in a drive thru lane that makes sense to their location.  This is a pretty easy task if you are building from the ground up, but especially in our current economic situation ground-up builds for QSRs are exceedingly rare.  I think I’ve worked on maybe 4 in the last 5 years (out of 115+ projects).  That leaves us with designing around an existing building and more often than not a strip center.

Number 98 in Mr. Smith’s list cautions owners against installing a drive thru lane with tight bends or directional changes.  This is an ever present dilemma when trying to plan and install a drive thru in a strip center.  What do you do?  Do you make the customer drive around the entire complex to get back to your window?  Do you make them pull a u-turn in the rear of the lot to enter your lane?  The options are few and sometimes it simply becomes choosing the lesser of two evils.  My suggestion to my clients in these situations is to physically get out there in their own vehicle – drive around the building, perform the u-turn, pretend to order even.  What works and what seems to cause an issue?

There are a lot of things to consider when building a new restaurant of any type or concept – from design to installation, from permitting to possession – if you are a restaurant owner and operator first and not a construction pro, I urge you to seek out help during this phase of development.  You don’t have to hire River’s Edge, though I promise you’ll be better off if you do, but find a partner to guide your construction phase properly so you can devote your focus to getting your new business ready to run.  Let me know what your biggest drive thru development challenges have been in the comments below.  Feel free to leave any specific questions you may have and we’ll do our best to get you pointed in the right direction.

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Chik-fil-A: a QSR helping kids make healthy choices

Written by Matt on January 16, 2012 — Leave a Comment

Last week the nation’s largest quick-service chicken concept, Chick-fil-A, announced a revamped kids menu offering perhaps the industry’s healthiest options for little tikes. In a market clouded with lots of trans-fat and fried mystery meat, Chick-fil-A’s new kid’s meal includes applesauce and get this………grilled chicken nuggets! That’s right – a QSR actually offering grilled chicken to kids instead of the traditional fried chunks of highly processed ‘chicken’ that some of the other chains are still slinging.

Moves like this make me very happy. Don’t get me wrong, I work in an industry frought with claims of leading to childhood obesity and aiding the nation in over-eating and over-weight adults. While River’s Edge Project Management does not have any role in the menus or products that our clients sell (we make sure the walls are able to support the menuboard and that the lobby looks fantastic to the customer), I certainly don’t agree with the side of the fence that points the blame at this industry – personal responsibility (or rather lack thereof) needs to be the one catching the blame. I’ve said it before in articles about the brilliant menu-labelling legislation (note the sarcasm when I say brilliant) so I won’t get into that again (right now anyways), people need to be cognicent of what they are eating and they need to be even more in tune with what their kids are eating.

On this sunny MLK day, I took the morning off and accompanied my oldest son to go see a pre-school play. First off, let me just get it out there that ‘watching’ a play with an entire auditorium of children under the age of five is interesting at best! Luckily the whole thing only lasted about 45 minutes and then we were left only with the question of where to grab some lunch. We settled (read, my son adamantly chose) on a large chain restaurant nearby. The restaurant, which I’ll leave nameless for now, is your typical ‘put so many giant TVs in one room that it’s impossible to focus on anything in particular’ type of place. Thanks in large part to my beautiful wife, my kids and I eat very well and generally very, very healthy. We don’t eat out much and it’s an even rarer opportunity that I take one of my kids out by myself, so it’s always interesting to see what they choose to order. For the most part it’s open game when out with Dad – as long as they steer clear of the ‘market-price’ lobster or things of the sort I’m pretty ok with them picking their own meals.

Today’s restaurant experience was also an interesting one. First off, when my son ordered an apple juice we were told that the only ‘juice’ they have is lemonade……this bugs me something fierce, but I won’t get into that now either. My son cheerfully accepted a lemonade and we went to work on the kids menu. After looking over some fried this and fried that (all the while he was informing me that this menu ‘doesn’t have much healthy stuff for kids’), he settled on the house mac’n'cheese. Much to my suprise, after he orderd his food the waitress rattled off a list of possible sides that actually included apple slices in between untold amounts of trans-fat sticks and things of the like. Much more to my suprise was that when my son smiled and ordered the apple sticks, the server looked at him like he was crazy!

The point I’m making, and I apologize for the rambling, is that as adults it is up to us to make healthy choices in life. As parents, it is of the utmost importance that we make healthy choices for our kids so that they may grow up to make healthy choices for themselves. So that someday, they may pick the apple slices over the fried face forms. They can’t make these good choices; however, if there aren’t such options on the menu. My hat is off to Chick-fil-A for boldly taking a step in the right direction and I applaud the other QSR and Fast Casual concepts that are also begining to head in the same direction. I suspect that we will see more and more of these healthy options springing up because quick-serves are here to stay, and if we as a nation want to do the same we need to start picking the healthy choices (at least once in a while).

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