Brian Helfrich With Summit Coffee

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Lee Kantor: [00:00:31] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Franchise Marketing Radio, and this is going to be a fun one today on the show we have Brian Helfrich and he is with Summit Coffee. Welcome, Brian.

Brian Helfrich: [00:00:41] Hey, thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:43] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Summit Coffee.

Brian Helfrich: [00:00:47] Summit Coffee is a coffee roaster and franchisor based in North Carolina. We’ve been around for twenty four years but have had a significant growth phase in the last two or three years. The mirrors are our step into franchising. So functionally, we’re a, you know, a company with a long foundation, but we operate as a startup.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:08] Now talk about the transition from going from not being a franchise to being a franchise. What was the thought process behind that?

Brian Helfrich: [00:01:16] Yeah, it’s a great question and one we get off and I think for a long time and I associated franchising with a stigma of these national chains and impersonal experience. And what I found is that franchising really is the opposite. And I think as stomach coffee started to expand, we are effectiveness was based on how we were able to activate on a local level. And we need to empower local owners and local entrepreneurs to bring some coffee to life in their communities and their neighborhoods, rather than us trying to do it as a corporation across multiple markets.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:50] So now when you decided to do that, what was the hardest part of that transition? Because it’s one thing of having your own people, your own, say your own kind of vision, and then now you’re kind of recruiting other people who have to be of like mind, at least philosophically, like mind financially in order to pull it off. How did you kind of navigate those waters?

Brian Helfrich: [00:02:16] Yeah. So there’s been a lot of challenges, but you know, to answer your question, what is the hardest for us? It was identifying parts of our brand and what we sold, you know, that were scalable, not everything that worked in one or two or three of our locations, which were all corporate owned, are the same over seven locations or 17 locations. And so identifying the core products and the core parts of our brand that we wanted to really lean into as we scaled was the steepest and also the most important learning curve.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:48] What about identifying the appropriate franchisee? Was that a difficult or was that easier than you imagined?

Brian Helfrich: [00:02:57] It’s been difficult. I mean, you have to learn how to say no, you know, you can’t say yes to everyone who wants to open a summit coffee. And I think it’s tempting, especially as an early franchisor, to say yes to someone who’s prepared to write you a check for the franchise fee. But the reality is the same thing that caused the apprehension to getting into franchising in the first place, which is, gosh, I’m giving my brand to somebody else. You have to use that same filter when you’re selling a franchise, will this person? You know, be nice to work with, and we enter it into it as a partnership, not necessarily a sale. And so it’s, you know, 10 year relationship, a franchise contract that you are entering into. And so you need to be really thoughtful about who you want to be communicating with in some cases on a daily basis for the next 10 years.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:41] Now at this stage, are you looking for folks that are kind of rolling up their sleeves that are, you know, making coffee and or, you know, actually part and doing the operations of the franchise? Or are you is is this an opportunity for somebody who already has a bunch of maybe food franchises and this is just adding one to their portfolio that’s in the coffee realm?

Brian Helfrich: [00:04:02] No, I would say that we are open to both senators because we have both. I think that our business works well with people who are active investors. We certainly don’t want it to be a passive investment. And so we have a minimum amount of in-person on the ground time that’s required from somebody from the ownership or ownership group. But also, you know, coffee is really great, but the quality of coffee, you know, can be taught. What we’re care more about is business development and marketing and community engagement. And so we try to set up our franchisees to be spending more of their energy focused on those things rather than on making lattes on a busy Saturday morning.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:43] Now are the folks that are coming up to you, like kind of coffee nerds that are like, Oh, this is a dream come true. I love coffee. This is fantastic. And then you’re trying to explain to him, well, the coffee part, you know, I can train you on. But this community ambassador person and this person that immerses themselves in the community really, you know, has to love their town. That’s, you know, maybe they didn’t think they were signing up for that, too.

Brian Helfrich: [00:05:06] Yeah, that’s a great question. Well, we were very thoughtful in how we marketed our franchise, and we are trying to cater toward people that aren’t necessarily coffee nerds, so to speak, because I think we found out early that people who are really particular about how they do coffee are not going to be as inclined to be part of a franchise system. Those are the people that want to have more control over their menu where they’re sourcing their products from. So we found ourselves being more appealing to people who were interested in, you know, getting into entrepreneurship, people that wanted a potential career transition and starting to lay the groundwork with one store and hopefully opening multiple stores. So we are not having much sales conversation at all with people who are real coffee nerds and we have coffee drinkers and people that love coffee. But it’s more about what coffee does and allows, which is connectivity and, you know, happiness and joy.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:02] Now are the people that are attracted to the brand so far are some of them, those folks that were just recently, you know, maybe part of the great resignation where they’re just saying, Hey, you know, life has got to be more than this cubicle. I want to kind of carve my own path here. Or are you finding some of those people raising their hand and saying, Hey, this looks like a great second act for me.

Brian Helfrich: [00:06:24] Yes, that’s exactly right. And you know, people aren’t diving all the way in. We’re in an early stage franchisor, and so they’re not diving in like I’m quitting my career. But I think it’s interesting to time out our move into franchising with the COVID pandemic and the great resignation because we filed our PhD in February of 2020. And obviously, you know, things started shutting down a few days later. And so it has been going in alignment with people who were analyzing how they’re spending their time in life and saying, You know, I love my job or I like my job or my job pays me well, but I want to do something else that I feel like is more fun or has more meaning or has an alternative revenue stream. And so that is sort of how we’ve capitalized and grown during the pandemic.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:14] Now, have you figured out this a challenge for a lot of emerging franchises, kind of how to find the right folks in those local markets that you’re trying to serve? Have you stumbled upon a marketing and sales kind of funnel that works for you?

Brian Helfrich: [00:07:30] You know, we’re doing things pretty organically. We we do most of our work in-house and so we do a lot of digital advertising. We run ads on LinkedIn and in Facebook and those appropriate platforms. We’re doing open houses at our existing cafes. So that’s more the organic advertising we have found, at least for our first, you know, we’ve sold it, we’ve sold 10 franchises and our in the two years. So we’ve been doing this and all of them had at least some vague familiarity with some coffee. And I think that has been helpful, especially so we’re doing direct marketing to our customers through newsletters, in-store signage, some of this more organic stuff, you know, as we scale and try to enter new markets, that’s going to be a different conversation. So we just ramped up digital advertising efforts and are are sort of filtering through all of those new leads that we’re getting right now.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:19] Now, as part of the different revenue streams in a coffee shop, are there. What kind of ways to leverage that national as you expand the the the brand? Is there going to be some way for the local franchisees to kind of leverage those the brand in terms of retail sales?

Brian Helfrich: [00:08:41] Yeah, I mean, I think I understand your question, I mean, what is our what is our national well,

Lee Kantor: [00:08:47] Like, say, I have a store in a market and then I have a customer that, you know, drinks the coffee when they’re there, but they also would love to have it, you know, kind of arrive on their doorstep every month. Am I going to benefit from that? Or is that something that is just the corporate gets the benefit of that?

Brian Helfrich: [00:09:06] You know, the corporate does. So we own, you know, it’s a blessing and a curse. We own the supply chain because we are the coffee importer, roaster and distributor. So any e-commerce business is run through a summer coffee roasting, which is a separate company. We encourage our stores. They all sell the retail coffee in their stores and do a good job with that. And so for people that are in store and have a good experience there, know there’s bags that line the shelves that are delivered weekly that customers can take home with them. And we also do have a grocery that are surrounding our retail stores, too. So from a big overhead perspective, we are trying to build brands in the market and give customers several different ways to interact with some coffee.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:49] Now is it possible if I’m in a local market and I have a customer that wants to private label or white label the coffee, is that a revenue stream for a franchisee?

Brian Helfrich: [00:09:59] It is. And since everything runs through our roasting company, we we run everything through that. But if the franchisee were to set up a relationship with a business or a restaurant or whatever brand, whatever it may be, there is a shared a shared profit system on that.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:17] Now, having, you know, 10 or so franchises out in the wild now, what kind of been a surprise learning for you that, hey, didn’t see that coming?

Brian Helfrich: [00:10:29] Yeah. Like I said early on, I think there’s two things. Like I said first was that what works in one market doesn’t necessarily work in another. At the same time, our our top five selling items are the same across every store. So like our core coffee is super scalable and then there’s varying parts to our operations which change. I think the hardest part has been quality control, and ultimately we ended up hiring somebody into a position a few months ago to really be focused just on that. Which is why I said coffee is not super hard. We do want a pretty consistent product, and that’s something that Starbucks is honestly nailed down is Starbucks are ubiquitous, but also a Starbucks latte tastes pretty similar from one cafe to the next, and we want to make sure that our coffee quality translates from Georgia to North Carolina.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:22] Now, how have you chosen the markets you’re in right now? Is it just been whoever raised their hand, or is it some strategy that target certain parts of the country first and then expand from there?

Brian Helfrich: [00:11:33] Yeah, it’s definitely strategically based. So we are clustering around new markets in North Carolina, and so our approach and expansion will be what we call cluster expansion. And so rather than doing one store here, one store there and also rather than just slowly expanding from where we are, we’re targeting markets that we think our emerging cities and where we can really build a brand. So if they’re under saturated with craft coffee companies, we feel like we can go in there and really be a preferred coffee company for a lot of the locals who live there. So we’re targeting a city like Atlanta, for example. You know, there’s a ton of people that live in Atlanta, and there’s not a lot of ownership in the local craft coffee scene. And so we feel like we can go in there and open five to 10 plus stores and really build a brand that matters there.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:26] And then that way, there are some economies of scale. When you do the marketing, totally.

Brian Helfrich: [00:12:31] There’s bread, so there’s economies of scale of marketing, training, supply chain. All that stuff is important. But yeah, so we’re also doing branding work that, you know, benefits ten stores instead of one store.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:43] Now is there a certain kind of characteristics of a good market you you mentioned kind of up and coming or maybe tech oriented? Or is it college towns or is it, you know, some like what are some of the qualities these clusters have?

Brian Helfrich: [00:12:59] Yeah, I mean, I think young families is our best and most successful demographic. And so, you know, older millennials, younger Gen Xers, I think, are big people that have kids and starting to have kids, and we have success in college towns. But really, that works. And so it’s cities where that has, you know, we’re going into Atlanta, for example, and we’re targeting the several different vibrant suburbs of Atlanta rather than the downtown Atlanta area. And so I think any city where people are moving to and families are popping up in good school districts, you know, are pretty good prerequisites for success. The other thing I would mention is cities that have an affinity for craft food and drinks. So people, cities with good restaurants, scenes or good brewery scenes are usually a good pre-requisite for markets that are going to like some coffee.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:57] Now, has there been a success story you can share that maybe somebody got into this first time franchisee and then have just been knocking that out of the park?

Brian Helfrich: [00:14:07] Yeah, I mean, one of our first groups within a town called Huntersville North Carolina, and it was three friends, three golf buddies who wanted to get into a business together, all have other jobs, but I think saw something on LinkedIn about it, and they had a vague familiarity with Summit. But I didn’t know them personally. And when they went in and they built out a store and sort of recognized that in in and around neighborhoods where they lived, there was a lack of not only craft coffee but also of a community gathering space. And so they opened last summer and from day one have been profitable. And, you know, just lines of people and, you know, single people and young families. And it’s really been a great success story from the first day, which obviously is, you know, always what we hope for, but never what we expect now.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:58] Has the experience changed or are we getting back to some semblance of pre-pandemic experience for the coffee drinker where they would hang out there, do their work? Or is it mostly still come in, get it and leave?

Brian Helfrich: [00:15:15] I think it’s coming back around. I. And I think there are some things, some habits that have changed probably forever, so we one of the things we did early in the pandemic is we built a mobile app to provide convenience and also some sort of safety security for customers who are more concerned about not interacting too long with inside spaces or with other people. So I think that will continue to be popular and grow. And so we’ll continue to put energy and resources into that. But I do think, as we’ve seen in the past, even just the last few weeks and last summer, when it felt like there was some optimism again that people want to get back together, they want to bring their friends together to over coffee or all of our cafes have beer and wine. And I do think that providing a good community space is going to be important. And ultimately, I think if the pandemic had really lasted for four months or six months, their changes would have been more permanent. I think because it’s been two years, I think. It’s given people a really long time to realize what they’re missing in terms of social connectivity, and so people are excited to come and hang out again.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:25] Now is there different models for the store? Like, is there a drive thru model or is it all like in store?

Brian Helfrich: [00:16:32] Yeah. There’s different models we’ve not done drive through yet, but I’d be surprised if we don’t have one in the next couple of years. So we we design every store customizable and so we do not have a one size fits all, which is very different from most franchisors. And it’s definitely more work for us. But we also feel like is more authentic and genuine to the local communities that every summit looks the same. So. And it depends ultimately where we are. So we have one in a high tourist, high pedestrian market that’s a much smaller store where people aren’t going to sit down all day, but they sort of want to be in a place where they can get a cup of coffee and get a great experience and then move on with the rest of their day. And then we have other ones that are more suburban wear, bigger square footage, more patio space, and those are going to be different looking cafés, obviously. So we have a range of what a smart coffee can look like, and I’m sure that we will both hone in on those things, but also continue to expand like through a drive thru model.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:29] So if somebody wants to learn more about the opportunity, what’s the website website?

Brian Helfrich: [00:17:34] Is Summit Coffee franchising good stuff?

Lee Kantor: [00:17:38] Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Brian Helfrich: [00:17:45] Thanks so much for your time. I appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:47] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Franchise Marketing Radio.