Thomas Nieto With Main Squeeze Juice Co.

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Lee Kantor: [00:00:32] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Franchise Marketing Radio, and this is going to be a fun one today on the show, we have Thomas Nieto with Main Squeeze Juice Co.. Welcome, Thomas.

Thomas Nieto: [00:00:43] Thank you very much for having me, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about main squeeze juice company. How are you serving, folks?

Thomas Nieto: [00:00:52] Sure. We are serving folks with whole fruits, whole vegetables, healthy, clean eatery. Quick, fast on the go. Our mission is making healthy easier. And we do it by offering this whole fruits and vegetables. Real food. 100 percent plant based. And we do it conveniently, quickly and at an affordable price point. And so the story is basically, I stumbled across a mom and pop juice bar in Lake Charles, Louisiana, about four years ago walked in, blown away. It was not your typical juice bar. The design was breathtaking. All the products were the best tasting products that I’ve ever had in my life when it comes to juice, smoothies, bowls. And, you know, I ended up falling in love love at first sight. You can call it and and so the rest is history. Here we are today. We have twenty five locations opened. We have well over 50 plus more locations that are in various stages of development between, you know, real estate or design construction. And so, yeah, we have a lot of momentum. We’ve grown quickly, but we’ve grown in a very smart way. And it’s all been organic up to this point.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:17] So well, that’s fitting. Therefore, it’s fitting that it’s organic, right?

Thomas Nieto: [00:02:23] Yeah, exactly. No pun intended

Lee Kantor: [00:02:25] Now. So you just discover this as a consumer.

Thomas Nieto: [00:02:30] Well, actually so. All right. I guess I’ll have to make the long story short a little bit longer. So basically, my background is I cut my teeth in the business arena with AT&T, started as a sales rep, ended as a regional manager for AT&T Corporate over the company on retail locations in North Florida left AT&T to actually do a venture called In-N-Out Smart Repair. And this was about six years ago. And so the self there was a cell phone repair concept. If you cracked your screen, any kind of electronics that needed repair. It was the kind of business that it was and a buddy of mine who actually, funny enough, I had hired at AT&T. He worked in construction, was begging me to get him in the air conditioning for take him out of the construction world. He ended up getting fired six months later because he couldn’t show up to work, made me look bad, but then totally redeemed himself by convincing me to take the leap of faith from AT&T and starting what was in and out franchise. And so that was a venture where we scaled from seven locations. We opened seventy eight locations and right at three years time, we were the fastest growing franchise in that space. We rose up to be the number three player in the space and ended up getting acquired by the largest player in the space CPR cell phone repair.

Thomas Nieto: [00:04:00] So from when we after we sold and did that merger acquisition with CPR, at that point, I’m kind of figuring out my next move. What am I going to do? Where am I to go, you know? And so I was getting phone calls, opportunities and whatnot with some different folks wanting to do ventures. And so in my exploration of what my next steps were. I ended up talking to some guys at a Lake Charles, Louisiana, about their cell phone repair concept, which was called Fix My Phone. These two gentlemen named both of them were Nick and Carl, and great guys ended up meeting with them. And while I was there evaluating their cell phone repair concepts, they were like, Hey, do you mind jumping in the car real quick? And my little sister is about to open a juice and smoothie bar, and she needs help unloading produce, which I thought was kind of odd, but I was like, Yeah, sure, man, I’ll jump in the car and go, help out. Why not? So I did that, and that’s where I walked in love. At first sight, I was blown away and the the kind of creators, if you will, the founders of that, that location that worked with some of the best chefs in the world to create the recipes. And these are two really special people, very authentic. We’re very close with them today.

Thomas Nieto: [00:05:23] Matt Myranda, husband and wife, is their passion to to open this juice bar and and really offer a holistic vegan option to their community and Lake Charles. And so they were so thankful that I was helping them unload produce and whatnot. And they were like, Oh man, we have to. Our products like let us let you taste everything. Look, guys, I mean, I’m, you know, I’ll do that, but just so you know, I’m not, you know, I’m not the healthiest person. I don’t really like juice to me, like juice tasted like the dirt or fruits, you know, not my cup of tea, but you know, I wanted to oblige. So I was like, OK, sure, I’ll try them. And lo and behold, I’m trying like green juice, beet juice, all these different juices that I couldn’t believe that I was loving every single one of them. Like, we’re putting in this, like, how does this taste so good? And to my surprise that, you know, we’re not adding anything straight whole fruits, whole vegetables, two to four pounds of produce in every bottle of juice, which was kind of mind blowing. When you think about how much four pounds of produce is going into one bottle of juice and everything I tried, it was amazing. And we’re like, Oh, we got to try the smoothies. I’m like, Well, how great can a smoothie since a smoothie? And to my surprise, I mean, the best tasting smoothies I’ve ever had.

Thomas Nieto: [00:06:49] Like, what do you like? How did these smoothies taste so good? Why are they so different? Well, we have a very special process on our bananas. We get them in a certain ripening stage and we freeze them at a certain temperature for a certain period of time. And that’s what we don’t use any ice or any fillers or sirups. It’s all just 100 percent whole fruits, whole vegetables. The only thing we’re adding is organic superfoods. And man, I was blown away and then they showed me that they were like, Oh, we got to try the US edible. And I didn’t even know how to say, Asieh. I didn’t even I didn’t know what A-Xii was, but once again blown away, it was there like, Yeah, we get our wild harvested from the Amazon rainforest, from indigenous tribes who like, climb the trees and pick the berries, and then they clean it. They’re in Brazil and they ship it straight to us. I was like, Wow, so I I was just light bulb moment blown away with with how mind you like, I’m here. Like having this epiphany like, man, this this is a very special brand and this is this is what I’m interested in. But funny enough, like the whole purpose, it was completely random that I was even there. The whole purpose of me being in Lake Charles was again for that cell phone repair concept.

Thomas Nieto: [00:08:02] So, you know, kind of concluding, I basically said, Look, I would be very interested in scaling this brand. Or at least I wanted to see how, like the first month went to his mind. You like I was there the Thursday before they opened on that upcoming Monday. And so but I kind of, you know, establish that, hey, I’m very interested in this brand would be very interested in potentially franchising it and learning more about it, et cetera. And so but then I kind of, you know, took a back seat and wanted to watch and see what it did for the first month. And certainly like their first day that they opened with no marketing, they sold out of everything at two o’clock by two o’clock in the afternoon and did six thousand and sales did over ninety thousand almost one hundred thousand in their first month. And so I was like, OK, so confirmation this brand is very, very special. It’s a it’s a brand that the products are so amazing and they taste amazing and they make you feel amazing where, you know, it’s a lifestyle brand you end up. It’s kind of like how people go to Starbucks, you know, over and over again that addicted to caffeine. You know, that’s that’s how I saw this brand because I was like, if I lived here, I would come here every single day because the energy that you’re getting on infusing your body with two to four pounds of produce is a very natural, amazing energy rush that you’re getting.

Thomas Nieto: [00:09:32] That’s basically the benefits of caffeine without all the jitters, and it’s more of a sustainable energy and so many other benefits health wise. So, you know, and I was like, Man, how cool is it to like, you know, how cool would it be to be able to scale a brand that also is serving like products that are literally helping people and improving people’s lives and improving their health and their well-being? A lot of businesses out there to make make a dollar, but really cool to be able to partner with the brand and scale a brand that ultimately could make a difference, a positive impact in people’s lives with their physical and mental health. So all that being said, I ended up doing a deal founding the franchise company back in July of Twenty Seventeen. We got to work on building the FTD brought in my my brother in law, who was part of that last venture that I mentioned within and smart repair, and he is an attorney and basically wrote our Ph.D. for Main Squeeze franchise. We completed the. September of 17 started licensing, then again, very kind of organic word of mouth, and then, like I said, here we are today.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:52] Now has any of the tactics changed like of going to market with a franchise that is in this kind of industry rather than the technology cell phone repair kind of industry? Was it the same kind of philosophy and strategy in place in order to franchise and scale this brand?

Thomas Nieto: [00:11:15] Yeah, well, you know, what I learned was coming fresh off of the in and out smart repair concept that was that was my first endeavor in franchising, but what I learned and I learned so much through that endeavor, to be honest with you, most of what not to do. Nevertheless, learned some invaluable lessons. I’ve kind of figured the thing out. I figured out they always had my business. Background comes from marketing, merchandizing, customer experience, how to create an extraordinary experience that retail brick and mortar from AT&T, but in and out really gave me that franchising experience and figured out that franchising is all about systems and processes. It’s about having a great product with great people, with great process. And so those principles are always law and truth for any brand in franchising, regardless of what the brand is, comes to this point having great people, having a great product and having great processes in place. And and so that’s what we kind of, you know, got to work on immediately. While we were working on the FTD, I was working every day at Lake Charles store. Of course, we had to streamline a lot of the operations, for example, you know, their recipes were, well, a handful of this and you know, a pinch of this, you know, so we had to standardize everything and create good structure and processes that can be easily taught and replicated. And so, yeah, that’s what franchising is. It’s about creating that structure where an operator and an owner can come in and they know the machine, basically, if you will, is already built. And all they have to do is grab the steering wheel and and make sure that they’re driving it every single day. So from from that standpoint, yeah, very much very similar in that regard.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:23] Now does the idea, what is the ideal franchisee look like? Are they somebody that has this kind of health and wellness background? Or are they could be anybody that’s open to, you know, just following systems and kind of leaning into this kind of an opportunity?

Thomas Nieto: [00:13:42] Yeah. You know, I guess if you ask that question to different, different folks, you might get different variations of what the answer is. But for me, most important is, you know, kind of two two main things up front that are big qualifiers. Number one is financial qualifications, because at the end of the day, it’s the number one reason why small business owners fail even franchisees because they’re under capitalized. And so that’s a big one. We have to make sure that everybody who’s getting into the space and going to be opening a main squeeze, that they’re coming out of the gates from a position of strength, but they’re not fully overleveraging and fully extending themselves so much to where it puts them in a conflicted position, which is ultimately a position of weakness. For example, I mean, if you if the investment costs three hundred and fifty thousand and you’re you went all in, you have no other working capital. That was that’s not a good situation. We don’t want you to just because you have the money to do the investment, that that doesn’t mean that you’re you’re well capitalized because you are highly at risk if you don’t have sufficient capital with sufficient buffering to account for your kind of worst case scenarios. And so that’s a big one, and we spend a lot of time on that and we make it a big priority. That was one of the big lessons that I learned and in and out and I got to I got to see how those the consequences of not making that a priority and how that played out and it ended up playing out.

Thomas Nieto: [00:15:31] Not well. And and, you know, people were frustrated, people got hurt. And and that’s not why I’m in this game. I’m in this in this deal to help people and provide great opportunities for entrepreneurs and to serve our customers and amazing product and to an awesome place for all of our employees that come to work every day. So financials, number one number two is after that is I really, really feel strongly that this has to be this business specifically, not necessarily just franchising meaning like the passion. The talent of following systems and processes are the characteristics of somebody who does that very well. But. More so somebody has to be you have to be passionate about who we are and why we do what we do. You have to be connected to that. Why? And that might sound, oh, cheesy, superficial kind of. Everybody might say that. And you know, it’s it sounds good, but some people could think that that’s fluff or but it’s really not. It’s really important you have to be connected at the core value level to what we believe from a philosophy standpoint about people. You have to be connected to why we do what we do. And the reason is if you’re not passionate about what you’re doing and why you’re doing what you’re doing when the going gets tough and by the way, you will be tested, it’s not always going to be sunshine and rainbows.

Thomas Nieto: [00:17:06] You’re not always going to be on the mountaintop. Sometimes you will have to go through the valley and when the going gets really tough, if you’re not really passionate about it and all the real drive for you is money, well, you’re going to quit. You’re going to want to give up because it doesn’t mean anything deeper than a dollar. And so I really believe strongly that there has to be a fit at that core value level with what we believe about people philosophically and why we the mission behind what we’re doing and why we do what we do. And and if you have connectivity there, of course, third layer is I’m really looking for people that have a proven track record. Ideally, it’s very helpful as it would cuts the learning curve down if you have a background in restaurant operations that that helps. It’s not a deal breaker. The first two are, but that third one is not a deal breaker, but it makes a difference. And certainly, you know, regardless of whether you have that restaurant background or knowledge in your in your quiver, you at least need to have a proven track record of winning. I want to be able to see your past endeavors, your past work experiences, and I want to see what your track record is and I want to talk to references and I want to know what you’ve done up to this point.

Thomas Nieto: [00:18:35] And what you find is when you have a pattern of past successes and somebody that has a track record of winning and everything that they do, the odds are they’re going to continue that trend and they will they will find a way and make your way to win in whatever they do. And that’s just, you know, inside of somebody and that’s who they are at the core. So we’re looking for winners. We’re looking for people who are motivated that are, you know, that are that are passionate and determined to win no matter what it takes at all costs. And so, so those are the three main things that I’m looking for and what a great candidate looks like. And we are very selective. We we end up doing, you know, not doing, I should say a lot of deals with a lot of people that that meet criteria one typically financially in, but they don’t they don’t have number two and or a combination of number two and number three. And so that the ideal candidate, somebody that is well capitalized, that has the money that can fight from a position of strength right out of the gates. He’s very passionate about the brand and our mission and why we do what we do and really has a core value connection to like what we believe and what our philosophies are about business and people. And then, number three, having a proven track record of winning.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:05] Now your location, you started, I guess, in the Louisiana kind of Gulf Coast area. Are you? Is that the main area of growth now or is it the kind of the world is your oyster at this stage?

Thomas Nieto: [00:20:19] Yeah, I mean, for us is a young brand, and I would recommend for any brand again, this is a lesson that I learned within and out of what not to do is doing any kind of a shotgun approach. When you’re young and when you’re an emerging brand, you think it can work, but it can’t and it won’t. In my opinion, it’s too tough if you’re doing one unit in North Carolina and then you go in one unit in Colorado and then you’re doing two units in California and you’re doing. So for us, we were very intentional about our growth and about the foundation, how we see it as what we’re building with our units. And so we started out of Louisiana. We really honed in and targeted specifically Houston. And so we really focus all of our efforts on developing Houston. And now we have 30 locations that we’re doing in Houston alone. Now we’re turning our attention to Dallas and we want to. It’s like a domination strategy, if you will. But for going in, we want to be very intentional and targeted with our growth so that our units are really getting all of the the leverage of the power of the brand. And that brand power was shared marketing with the exposure of the brand and brand recognition and reputation and accessibility to our customers where they live, work and play.

Thomas Nieto: [00:21:48] And so we are growing in clusters specifically honed in on Gulf states. Southeast region is where we’re concentrated. But certainly, you know, the world is our oyster, but it’s just a matter of choosing the right time and the the right approach. For example, we are at this point, we’re going all the way to Florida. We’re doing a 10 unit development out of North Florida, Jacksonville. We want to continue developing in other markets south of Jacksonville and Florida. We’re going up actually to Missouri, but we’re in St. Louis. But when we’re doing a development deal in someplace outside of our existing clusters, we’re only going to do a deal if we’re doing it at least clusters of minimum of four, just because again, I’m not going to go, I’m not going to do a deal with somebody that wants to do one location that’s logistically really far away. I mean, especially in the food business, we have to find a new warehouse to be able to for distribution through distribution, supply chain logistics. I mean, there’s so many things that go into. And then furthermore, you kind of defeat the whole purpose of being a part of a powerful brand if you’re not going into a market with intention of dominating that market.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:10] So if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what’s the website?

Thomas Nieto: [00:23:17] Well, I didn’t get a main squeeze franchise icon and check us out, and we’d love. It’s a very quick little inquiry that you can fill out and and we would love to chat and have a conversation with anybody that wants to bring healthy to their community and and have to read more about us. If you feel like, you know, there is a core value connection and fit to what we’re all about, what our mission is. We’d love to chat.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:40] Good stuff. Well, Thomas, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Thomas Nieto: [00:23:46] Thank you very much for having me, Lynn.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:48] All right. Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Franchise Marketing Radio.