Franchising

Mici's glorious, 'gut-wrenching,' 1st-person story of starting to franchise

It's your baby. It's your life's work. It's your living. And now you're opening up your brand to franchising and all that entails. Mici's Partner and CEO Elliot Schiffer is undergoing the harrowing and potentially profit-making process now and relays what it's been like working to get the process started in a pandemic.

Today, Mici has six Colorado locations, but that number is about to change. (Provided)

June 24, 2021 by Elliot Schiffer — Ceo, Mici

In January of 2020, Mici decided to start franchising. The brand was ready for it.

Over the past 16 years, we had built the brand to six locations, streamlined operations, grown top-line and improved margins. Our founder, Jeff Miceli, had perfected and patented a system to make hand-tossed pizza that new employees could learn in a day.

I knew that we had finally cracked the code on how to serve artisanal products with the speed, efficiency and technology of a big QSR pizza chain. Our board advisors, including David Doty (former franchisee of several concepts and former CMO of Black Bear Diner) and Krista Gibson (former CMO of Brinker Restaurants) gave us the green light to move forward with franchising.

Launching a franchise properly is not a small undertaking and we are still a small brand, so we outsourced each aspect to a third-party firm at the outset. We had a legal team draw up our first FDD, a web designer create our first franchise website, a third-party sales organization build a franchise sales and support process, a third-party training systems company create an extensive operating manual with training guides, and a real estate firm create systems for site selection and development.

"Questions go 'round in your head: Will they be great operators? Will they represent the brand well in the community? Will they maintain our culture of putting people first?"

-Elliot Schiffer

Learning from their expertise was helpful. We were able to spend under $100,000 to create the bones of the franchise system.

Elliot Schiffer (right) and Mici's Jeff Miceli are among those leading the brand's franchising efforts.(Photo: Adam Larkey)

Then, it was March 2020 and I was excited to finally launch the franchise business. That's when COVID-19 forced the world to grind to a halt, particularly the restaurant industry. It left me feeling like we had to put our franchising goals on hold and — like the rest of the industry — fight for overall survival.
How a curse can become a blessing

Though it's true that the pandemic cost us a year, it's also true that when I look back now, I see the situation made us a much stronger brand. Kim Miceli — our founder in charge of marketing — leaned in heavily to digital spend and it paid off. In fact, we're now up to 13,000 rewards members per store.

But it certainly doesn't end there:

• Our senior vice president of Operations, Joe Melton, figured out how we could continue to execute well operationally, even as a 100% delivery and pickup operation.
• We installed all new high-efficiency pizza ovens that could do twice the volume we did previously.
• We installed cell phone backup systems in our stores, so we never missed an online order due to an internet outage.

And finally, we fought back to grow our year-over-year sales by 10% during the pandemic, as well as by 15% when our dining rooms were able to reopen. In fact, our numbers are now on par with some of the biggest and best brands in the country, and we're proud to share the full P&L from each of our stores directly in our franchise disclosure document.

On top of all this, I know now — more than ever — that our franchisees can be successful running our system.

'A gut-wrenching leap'

Yet, as strong as the brand is today, and with as many systems as we've put into place to support franchisees, it's still a gut-wrenching leap to put our brand in the hands of franchisees.

Questions go 'round in your head: Will they be great operators? Will they represent the brand well in the community? Will they maintain our culture of putting people first?

With these questions in mind, we decided to stop working with an outside sales firm and bring the process in-house by hiring a chief growth officer to oversee every aspect of franchise growth.

As a brand, Mici isn't interested in selling territory for the sake of collecting a check. Rather, we want to work with operators who can protect and even grow the Mici brand.

Today, we're now in conversations concerning the sale of our first handful of multi-unit development territories in the states that surround Colorado, which were also within our initial set of targeted states. We're also going to build a handful of corporate sites in Colorado over the next year.

It's safe to say, 2021 should be a huge year for Mici — an overnight success 17 years in the making.

Editor's note:Mici Handcrafted is based in Colorado where its existing stores are located. Mici, by the way, is short for the family behind the brand, the Micelis, who originally developed many of the recipes used for the brand's menu items today.