Spotlight on Success:

Case Study on Business Strategy

Case Study #8 How a Successful Small Business Used Strategy and Business Planning to Meet Both the Goals of Mom and Pop

How the owners of a Philadelphia area Sandwich Kiosk business were able to meet both the goals of husband and wife team while increasing income and reducing the burden of running a small business.

The Problem:

A firefighter had spent most of his life in public service, battling fires and rescuing cats from tree or at least helping those who needed help. But then one day, he had an opportunity to start a small business while continuing to fire fires. A sandwich cafe business. While the owner had no formal business training he soon learned the sandwich business and found he had so much success, he was ready to open a 2nd and then a 3rd and the a 4th and so on all while continuing to fight fires for the city.

However, running a business takes time. He found increasingly he relied on his life partner and wife to manage many of the day to day operations. She did a great job and worked tirelessly often until late at night. After the chain had grown to 6 sandwich kiosks, Rich wanted to grow some more and was even considering franchising, but his wife, Amy, was stretched to her limits and had had enough. While he was fighting fires, she was finding substitute workers when someone called in sick and was processing time sheets until late into the night.

The Solution:

The husband and wife team knew they needed a new business plan. That’s when they contacted our business consultants. They were not looking for a traditional business plan and certainty were not looking for a fancy document that would sit idle on a shelf. While we had prepared many traditional strategic plans, we knew they needed a new plan and a new strategy to enable Rich to do what he loved while allowing Amy to limit or even shrink her operating responsibilities.

This was not a tradition strategic business plan about determining market opportunity, management team structures and developing proforma financial plans, this was about developing a business plan which would overcome obstacles these successful entrepreneurs had encountered in reaching their vision.

A first step in this project was to better understand the options for the business. We first looked at the obvious solutions such as hiring an operations manager or promoting someone from within. While they were willing to have someone take some tasks off Amy’s plate, for various reasons including some complexities unique to their situation, neither Rich nor Amy liked this solution.

Next we looked at other options such as franchising the business. While franchising had some interesting benefits and we found their were other successful sandwich kiosk businesses from which we could learn, ultimately this solution too didn’t fit. There were too many legal hurdles and too much administration of the franchisees for either Rich or Any to think this option looked like fun.

Finally, after exploring several other options, including selling the business outright, we found a variation on the traditional franchise model. While continuing to run their existing chain of kiosks, Rich would set up and sell other kiosk locations one at a time, mostly to people he knew and trusted to do an excellent job. By doing so he was able to earn income on what he enjoyed which was setting up and launching these new kiosks while also earning part of their ongoing revenue, but not having to manage the day to day operations.

The strategy was unique but it worked and both the husband and wife team were happy with the plan. Rich soon found a buyer and launched his 7th and 8th kiosk, while Amy was able to manage to reduce her workload to closer to 40 hours a week. The couple earned more money than they had ever imaged when Rich was simply a fireman and they loved the challenges and rewards of running their small family business.