Tag Archives: start your own business

Franchise Profile: Taste Buds Kitchen

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Have you been to your local Taste Buds Kitchen yet? Taste Buds Kitchen specializes in fresh and unique cooking events. The franchise has a mission to be the top culinary entertainment experience for kids and families by engaging and delighting budding chefs.

What began as a few holiday baking classes and cupcake making birthday parties, quickly evolved into much more. TBK’s culinary adventures includes an ever-growing variety of classes, parties, camps and special events that combine a well-balanced mix of engaging recipes, both savory and sweet, as we take to the kitchen to sprout taste buds and a good time for all ages.

Taste Buds Kitchen is proclaimed the “Best Kids Cooking Class” by New York Magazine and featured as the must try activity by CBS, NBC, The Wall Street Journal, Fox, The New York Times, Hampton Magazine and more.

Franchise Opportunity

Taste Buds Kitchen provides a great opportunity to own a business that is exciting AND delicious. By joining the Taste Buds Kitchen family, you can capitalize on the popularity of their concept by opening a Kids Kitchen in your community.

The Kitchen
Taste Buds Kitchen is an amazing Kitchen Studio designed and built just for kids.  Tables and chairs adjust for kids and adults of all ages and kitchen utensils are located on lower shelves so that the kids can reach and take part in the whole kitchen experience alongside chef instructors.

With your franchise you will receive a design and construction specification that will give you all the details on how to build your own Taste Buds Kitchen!

You’re in Good Hands

TBK has designed a system to assist their franchisees from the day they sign the franchise agreement through their pre-opening, grand opening, and through the life of the business. Training is held at the corporate kitchen in New York City. The program includes both time in the kitchen and hands on training in important areas such as marketing and sales, administration, operations, customer service, human resources and, most importantly, cupcake decorating.  To assist in creating an environment of success, TBK will provide assistance and sometimes have final approval on the following items Site Selection, Accounting Software and Systems, Content development, Advertising and promotion, Marketing strategies, and Ongoing Branding.

Interested in learning more? Check out http://franchiseclique.com/franchise/Taste-Buds-Kitchen

 

Handling Change In Your Business

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Whether you are a current franchisee, a future franchisee, or even just a fan of our blog, chances are that you have experienced major changes in your workplace. Changes can cause great anxiety, especially if you are forced to adjust the way you have always approached a situation. Changes in process are often the best way to enhance productivity in business, yet the transition can prove to be troublesome.

I wanted to take this week’s post to discuss dealing with change and the growth contained in the process of change. Most of us operate under the illusion that life remains constant, but in reality, it is always changing. Your business, if it’s growing, is always changing, too.

Based on a study by the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), the number one issue facing senior leadership today is “dealing with complex challenges.” Furthermore, studies say that the number one most important competency in shortest supply today is dealing with change. The CCL defines challenges as problems that:

  1. Lack a clearly defined solution
  2. Remain beyond an individual’s or single group’s ability to overcome
  3. Have significant strategic, cultural, environmental, and marketplace impact
  4. Create a paradox of reflection and action
  5. Render traditional solutions ineffective
  6. Demand flexibility and agility as challenges shift seemingly overnight

Being open to change and the lessons within change is no small task. Positive change requires letting go of old patterns and taking a fresh approach. In business, and in life, we must go beyond our preconceived ideas. We have to embrace, rather than resist, the change.

Change in an organization calls for a great deal of communication, specifically from the leaders in the group. What are some important lessons that you have learned about change from your business? Leave comments below!

Guest Blog: Top 3 Franchises of 2014

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Upside Group Consulting is this week’s featured blog post! Upside Group provides step-by-step coaching and consulting to franchisors seeking to increase franchise units sold by developing a solid branding platform. This week, as our guest bloggers, they talk about their top 3 franchise picks for 2014.

The Top 3 Franchises of 2014

From fitness to frozen yogurt, the franchise industry has always reflected the ever-popular trends that permeate the business world. And while some concepts seem to last longer than others, it should come as no surprise that it can be hard for many business owners to decipher which trend is lasting versus which is simply fleeting.

While unfortunately, there’s no foolproof plan, there is a way to test the franchise waters: by looking to this year’s most successful franchises businesses. Selected from the Entrepreneur 2014 Franchise 500, here is a list of three of the year’s top franchises – and just what exactly you can learn from them:

1. Anytime Fitness: Anytime Fitness combines access with affordability to appeal to both customers and employees alike. From New Year’s resolutions to a multitude of 24-hour locations, gyms like Anytime Fitness successfully capitalize on the growing trends of health and convenience.

2. Hampton Hotels: Coming in at number two, Hampton Hotels places an impressive emphasis on fostering a franchisee support system. With ongoing support offered through use of newsletters, meetings, and security procedures, in addition to a multitude of marketing support, Hampton Hotels works hard in every aspect of its business plan to promote franchisee success.

3. Subway: Since 1965, the successful sandwich shop has transformed itself into a powerhouse thanks to an emphasis on solid marketing. By taking advantage of a wide variety of different tactics – from spokespeople to healthy living initiatives – Subway combines the ease and convenience of a fast food establishment with the attractiveness of an on-the-go lifestyle.

Whether your franchise has been growing steadily for years or you’re just beginning to consider the idea of expanding, by looking to this year’s top franchise businesses, you can take away a series of important lessons that can help you find success – from management to marketing.

Learn more from 2014’s top three franchises by contacting an experienced franchise consultant at Upside Group today.

Thriving in Franchising After Leaving Corporate America

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Franchisee Profile of Fred and Lorraine Pierson
Showhomes Franchisees, Raleigh NC

Fred Pierson’s path to entrepreneurship was anything but linear. Before becoming a Showhomes Home Staging franchise owner in Raleigh, N.C., Fred Pierson had two different corporate careers.

 

In college, Pierson earned a degree in aviation management and went on to manage corporate jet facilities across the United States. Due to the nature of his work, he and his wife, Lorraine, moved frequently. After years of packing and unpacking, Fred, Lorraine and their young children settled in North Carolina and Fred left the aviation industry and his first corporate career.

 

Fred then joined Starwood Hotels and Resorts. He felt that “hospitality was similar in nature” to his aviation work. For the next decade, Pierson worked his way up the corporate ladder, eventually earning the title of General Manager. As the economy contracted during the Great Recession, Fred returned to work for a competitor at half the compensation of what he had been making.

 

“After doing corporate work for 25 years, my wife and I felt it was time to start working for ourselves,” says Pierson. “In life, opportunities present themselves occasionally, but what really made Showhomes the right opportunity for us was the timing,” he explains.

 

As luck would have it, a good friend of Fred’s was starting her own mortgage brokerage firm around the same time as his departure from the hospitality industry. Due to her encouragement, Fred became a national and state licensed mortgage loan officer — passing both tests on his first try.

 

“Old dogs can learn new tricks!” he says.

 

Working as a mortgage officer was very interesting to Pierson, though he soon realized it could put a strain on his relationships with friends.

 

“I refused to sacrifice my relationships with people to originate loans,” Pierson explains, “As such, my wife and I looked at opportunities that would provide me with a pipeline of loans without pushing me to use my personal contacts.”

 

A good friend led the Pierson’s to Showhomes, a business model they felt they would use as an “ancillary feeder” to his mortgage business that catered to those relocating to the Raleigh area.  “We quickly saw that the opportunities with Showhomes were far greater than within the mortgage business,” says Fred. “In a short period of time we saw impressive results that allowed us to walk away from the mortgage side of things and focus on Showhomes.”

 

The Pierson’s ultimately chose Showhomes over other franchise opportunities because it played to the couples’ talents. Lorraine enjoyed interior design and, as a byproduct of Fred’s aviation management days, was adept at staging houses and making them feel like homes. Fred, a self-described “turnaround specialist for companies,” easily brought in new business.

“Technically no one does what we do on a national level with the level of support and national branding that Showhomes offers,” Pierson says.

 

On what to expect when becoming a Showhomes franchisee Fred says, “You’re buying the right to a territory and what you do with that territory and how you manage it effectively is up to you.

 

As franchisees, Fred and Lorraine have learned a considerable amount about real estate and the effect staging has on the buying and selling process. The number one challenge to Showhomes as a business model, according to Fred, is demonstrating the value of a staged home to both the seller and to the realtor.  “Showhomes is here to stage, maintain, manage and protect your home. My job is to make someone fall in love with your home; it’s the Realtor’s job to find a buyer”.

 

With experiencing close to a 70-percent success rate of having homes sell within 90 days of being staged, the Pierson’s feel that the human elements—leaving slippers by the bed, The Wall Street Journal near the coffee maker– clearly make a difference and bring a human touch.

 

“To be successful it helps to be well-rounded and most people, because of their corporate careers, are specialists in a particular area, like sales, operations, or administrative. For this reason, it works best with a great team, similar to myself and my wife Lorraine.”

 

“I take great satisfaction in explaining Showhomes to business principals,” says Fred, “Smart people right away say, ‘That’s an amazing business model!’”