Why Apple Spice?
When your clients look for a business, profitability is one of their biggest questions and rightly so! Many are leaving the corporate world with its salary caps, limitations on lifestyle and to find personal fullment growing a business.
With their featured franchise concept, the Apple Spice brand, your prospective clients have 3 distinct models to choose from:
- Apple Spice Box Lunch Delivery & Catering Co.
- Apple Spice Café & Bakery
- Apple Spice Café & Bakery – Multi Unit
All models are designed around profitability either because they are scalable, operationally efficient and/or benefit from expanding revenue streams.
The creative minds behind Apple Spice understand that some investors are not comfortable recommending food concepts. Some brokers have said that when asked about food, they try to steer their clients in a different direction. Like any business, food isn’t for everyone, however, one of their business models are in fact a profitable lifestyle business, and the other two have so much potential to be profitable. The goal of this article is to help you understand why the Apple Spice brands will be the next big thing in the bakery-café space, taking on brands like the Panera Breads of the world.
Lifestyle Model
With their twenty-seven year history in the food industry, Apple Spice Box Lunch Delivery & Catering Co. model is the foundation for all of the models that they offer. This model builds relationships with businesses in the community and hosts their meetings, events and holiday celebrations. With the Thanksgiving and holiday seasons just around the corner, this would be a perfect business to have operational. Today, they have 18 successful franchises in this model with several managing multi-million dollar businesses.
This model validates extremely well, has a strong Item 19 and truly is a lifestyle business. The primary operational hours are Monday thru Friday early morning to mid-afternoon. Occasionally, there will be opportunities in the evening or weekends but it’s at the total discretion of the franchisee to entertain those or not. Their stream-lined operations allow franchisees to host events serving hundreds to thousands with their bread and butter numbers being 15–50 people. Due to the fact that this is not a “destination” type location, the overhead expenses are low because they operate in “industrial flex” space, as opposed to “prime real estate.”
Retail Models
Their retail Cafe’s are fast-casual restaurants competing in the Bakery-Café space of the restaurant industry. The Bakery-Café segment is the fastest growing today, on average of 6.5 percent per year for the past 5 years. This segment has little competition, with big players like Corner Bakery or Panera Bread. Due to their rich history and menu that has been highly successful from coast to coast, Apple Spice believes they can be a strong competitor!
Leveraging their deep experience and many years of history in the Box Lunch Delivery and Corporate Catering environment, they opened two retail Cafe’s in 2011 called Apple Spice Café & Bakery. They are now very excited about this model’s success in Salt Lake City and have recently opened the franchise opportunity. With the steep financial requirements required by Panera Bread & Corner Bakery, our Café model is much more accessible than our competition.
Your clients can open a beautiful Café and still benefit from multiple revenue streams! Café owners will also service the business community out the back door and host a classic dine-in experience with customers walking in the front door. Additional revenue streams in the Cafe model include Take-Out, Drive-Thru and Fresh Express locations around the community.
With the Apple Spice Café & Bakery – Multi-Unit model, Apple Spice clients will benefit from the scalability of what they call a Commissary. A Commissary is the box lunch delivery and catering model turned into a centralized hub for baking, food preparation and delivery, supporting multiple Cafe’s and the business community. The Commissary is again in an industrial space with low overhead, while the Café kitchen square footage is reduced allowing for a smaller footprint in premium real estate which drives higher profitability. This hub and spoke model is most efficient in a medium to large metropolitan area with lower than average overhead costs.
The Apple Spice Menu
It won’t take long for their new Apple Spice franchisees to become passionate about bringing a great dining experience to every guest. With delicious, inventive recipes focused on flavor and health, Apple Spice’s time-tested menus serve up an inviting list of options for all foodies including vegetarians, vegans and the gluten-free crowd. With a choice of over a dozen interesting, creative salads served in full and half size portions, along with savory soups, Panini’s, and hot or cold sandwiches, patrons will enjoy a very satisfying dining experience!
Let’s Make History Together!
From a franchisor’s perspective Apple Spice is more than ready! Nine of their 18 franchisees are Area Developers and will be mentors in target markets. These markets include Southern California, Central Florida, Ohio, Mid-Atlantic States and the Inter Mountain West.
Together we have a chance to make history and bring our Café models to the masses. We know there is a market for this brand. We know the public will love our savory menu and beautifully designed dine-in experience. Help us find the right candidates. We also know that once we have a few opened, the buzz will start and then there’s no telling how big we will become. The broker fees are $25k for a single unit and go up from there with multi-unit investments.
We look forward to a great year of growth in 2016. Let’s do this together!
~ Cynthia L. Schick – Sr. Brand Manager