{"id":2882,"date":"2023-07-06T02:50:17","date_gmt":"2023-07-06T02:50:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bbf02a7041.nxcli.io\/?p=911"},"modified":"2023-07-06T02:50:17","modified_gmt":"2023-07-06T02:50:17","slug":"sobol-sees-enormous-growth-in-first-year-as-franchise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mysobol.com\/franchise\/sobol-sees-enormous-growth-in-first-year-as-franchise\/","title":{"rendered":"SoBol Sees Enormous Growth in First Year as Franchise"},"content":{"rendered":"

When\u00a0SoBol\u2019s<\/a><\/span> director of sales and business development, Robin Graf, arrived at the International Franchise Expo in New York in June, each of the acai bowl brand\u2019s stores were independently owned and operated, and Graf was eager to prove that the fledgling brand\u2019s model could be scaled through franchising. By the conference\u2019s end, Graf\u2019s team was optimistic about one candidate\u2019s potential to represent the brand, so they signed a contract for their first franchisee. One year later,\u00a0SoBol<\/a><\/span>\u00a0has signed 34 more franchisee contracts, including a number of multi-unit agreements, making theirs one of the most successful opening years of any foodservice franchise.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur first franchisee was doing great business very quickly,\u201d Graf said. \u201cThey had a great location on a busy road, so we weren\u2019t sure if it was an anomaly. But it completely took off, and we had people begging us to get on board. Once we signed our second and third franchisees and saw the success they were having, we became convinced that our model could be successfully adopted and applied on a much greater scale than we initially imagined.\u201d<\/p>\n

As new SoBol stores opened, interest continued to grow among consumers and potential owners. \u201cWe were getting 10 organic leads per week, growing exponentially with each new store,\u201d Graf said.<\/p>\n

The brand\u2019s rapid growth was not only a result of new owners signing contracts. Existing owners were quickly eager to expand, many opening up second or third stores within their first months as SoBol owners.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had some out-of-the-gate multi-unit development deals, but most of our owners have started with a single unit and then quickly decided to invest in additional units,\u201d said Graf. \u201cMost of our franchisees have moved on to a second or third unit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graf also noted that many new owners are friends or family of existing owners, suggesting that owners are developing personal attachments to the brand.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the owners who have bought in more recently are family members of our earlier owners, which shows that owners are excited about the business in a way that\u2019s touching their personal lives,\u201d Graf said. \u201cAnd it speaks to the sense of community we\u2019ve engendered that people want to bring their loved ones on board.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Graf, that sense of community is shared by customers as well as owners.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople come into our stores and they really feel like they are part of something special,\u201d Graf said. \u201cThere\u2019s a chemistry between our product and the style of our stores and the staff that makes it all feel like home. That\u2019s what we read in all our reviews online, and that\u2019s heartening because it\u2019s exactly what we want.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graf attributes much of the brand\u2019s early growth to the model\u2019s operational simplicity, which allows owners with little experience in the industry to get on their feet quickly.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just an easy business to run,\u201d Graf explained. \u201cA lot of that comes from Jim [Kalomiris, SoBol\u2019s co-founder], who has spent 35 years in the restaurant industry. He owned a diner, which is all about keeping things moving, and he helped design SoBol to make operations easy for owners and service quick for customers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, the operational system does require some training, and Graf said SoBol\u2019s corporate team offers a wealth of resources to that end.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe training program is really top-notch,\u201d Graf said. \u201cAs soon as an owner becomes part of the family, we are holding their hand every step of the way. We offer a week of very specific, hands-on training before a store opens. We walk through every step of the process: back-of-house book-keeping, front-of-house service, how to cut fruit, how to scoop granola, everything. Then we\u2019ll establish a soft opening where owners invite their family and friends, and we\u2019ll have two or three corporate managers there to assist and shadow. We\u2019ll continue to hold the new owner\u2019s hand as long as they need it, sometimes two or three weeks after opening. Then we\u2019ll try to wean them off the hand-holding a bit, but we make it clear that they can always reach out to us for anything they need. Not just an answering machine at the corporate office, they can call me or Jim or Jason [SoBol\u2019s co-founder, president, and CEO] and we\u2019ll personally help out.\u201d<\/p>\n

SoBol\u2019s growth has also been accelerated by an increased consumer interest in acai bowls in recent years. Graf said that other acai bowl brands have helped boost awareness of the product but haven\u2019t posed much competition in terms of quality.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an excitement around acai that is really taking off,\u201d Graf said. \u201cSo it\u2019s becoming more familiar to consumers, but we do it best. Other stores just can\u2019t reproduce our experience. Not only the quality of our bowls but also the streamlined service. We get all our bowls out within 4 minutes of the customer approaching the counter, and our stores are so much more comfortable and appealing than others in the segment.\u201d<\/p>\n

A lot of work goes into making sure that every SoBol has that comfortable and appealing feel that Graf described. For as much real estate as the brand has purchased over the past year, SoBol\u2019s development team is very selective about which buildings can host the brand.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll look at locations as they\u2019re being qualified, and sometimes they just won\u2019t feel right, so we\u2019ll look for something else or adapt the building to make it right for us,\u201d said Graf. \u201cWe are very careful with the units we buy. We could have easily sold a hundred more stores last year, but we don\u2019t want to put any owner in a situation that isn\u2019t 100 percent set up for success.\u201d<\/p>\n

After an enormously successful first year, Graf said the SoBol team is excited to continue growing, and the brand plans to focus that growth along the east coast before branching out throughout the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking at more locations up and down the eastern seaboard,\u201d Graf said. \u201cWe want to keep pushing out along the edges of where our brand is known. And we\u2019ll just keep pushing that out. The sky is the limit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The acai concept signed 35 new franchisee contracts in its first year as a franchise and has ambitious plans to keep expanding<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2921,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mysobol.com\/franchise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mysobol.com\/franchise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mysobol.com\/franchise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mysobol.com\/franchise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mysobol.com\/franchise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mysobol.com\/franchise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mysobol.com\/franchise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mysobol.com\/franchise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mysobol.com\/franchise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mysobol.com\/franchise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}