I hope everyone reads this....While I do not know much about the AF's, projected earnings and stuff of the like, and I do agree they have made many rookie mistakes as it pertains to PR and projections.
I will tell from first hand experience, opening stores is not nearly as easy as some on this board think or wish that it is. There are many things to consider with opening a store. You can't just find the first open space in a strip mall and grab it. There are so many things to consider, demographics, trafffic, building codes, saturattion of other pizza and/or sub shops in the immediate area. And a lot of times there is not much availability because of other restaurants having exclusivity in there leases for a certain retail property. Then with being a new franchise some retail properties do not want to take a chance on you.
Take all that into account and add that a franchisee needs a minimum in forty thousand in cash to open the first store. 20 for the franchise fee and 20 in cash because lenders will not lend you money unless you have 10% of the line of credit in cash. The average credit line needed to open a store is $200,000.
Building permits do not fall out of trees, when we built our new office a year ago it took 8 months from the time we signed the lease to the day we moved in(in addition we negotiated the lease for two months prior to signing). And that was just an office, with restaurants it is soooo much more complex. HVAC requirements are different, grease traps, vent hoods, specialized fire suppression systems, gas lines. All of theses things are highly specialized for the restaurant industry and are under strict codes and are diifucult or the permit and inspection process.
We have talked about all of that and we still have not talked about people, Ken in Mooreseville lost one manager during training and the other quit the morning of his opening day. Staffing and training the most critical and hardest to obtain component of this equation. It just takes a lot of time.
I say all of this so that hopefully all of you will understand that it takes many many months not weeks to open stores, I know store openings is just one concern many of you have, so hopefully know you will focus on the other concerns from know on. Store openings will happen, just give it some time, there will probably be a rash of them in third and fourth quarter. I know that is when my first one will open.
Thanks for reading and I hope I provided some useful insight
AI
