Chad Franzen 19:03
What’s the best thing about the actual act of being a franchisee for Chill-N?
David Leonardo 19:11
You know, I think the best part is the fact that our hours aren’t your typical restaurant hours, right? So we open our stores at two o’clock. We close at 10 You know Monday to Thursday on Fridays we do close at 11. And on Saturdays we open a little bit earlier we open at either 12 or one and we close at 11 o’clock. And then we close back at we would start closing at 10 o’clock again on Sundays. So you can imagine someone who’s looking for a business but doesn’t want to be married to the location and because they have a family to have kids. You can imagine having breakfast with your kids. You know taking them to school coming into the store probably around 1212 30 you know helping with the opening. You know the store opens you have one or two employees when it opens and then you leave You go pick up your kids, you have dinner you come in before he closes. So that’s the kind of, I think that’s one of the joys that our franchisees are really liking. That it does provide a lot more flexibility than your standard restaurant that’s, you know, open and the hours of opening are kind of prohibitive for you to have a nice balance with your work life.
Chad Franzen 20:21
You kind of mentioned that you you have some pretty ambitious expansion plans. Most of your I’m looking at your website here. Most of your locations are in Florida. You have a couple in Texas, is that right? That’s right.
David Leonardo 20:33
That’s right. We have a couple in Texas. We’re getting ready to open up a store in a neighborhood called Brentwood in Nashville, Tennessee, which we’re very excited about. We have another store that we’re looking at in Bluffton, which is right outside of Hilton Head with the franchisee he also owns the rights to Charleston. So we’re really looking forward to having more stores with that franchisee our Orlando franchisee is opening up two stores this year. So and we’re talking to some people up in New Jersey, we have a franchisee out there. Hopefully, we’ll be opening up some stores there. So I, you know, ideally, there’s still some growth to be done in South Florida. So I think strategically, we would want to fill in the gaps go to the western part of the state, then go to fill out the rest of Orlando fill out the rest of the South Tri County area between Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade County, and then we start working our way up the coast. But when you meet great franchisees that are well capitalized have good experience. Going back to your earlier question about what we look for outside of the financial side, we want someone who’s okay managing younger, younger employees, most of our employees are high school and college kids, you know, they want to work a couple of shifts, everybody remembers that ice cream job or that, you know, grocery store job that’s that’s the type of job that we’re looking for it right, that’s the kind of employee we’re looking for. People that really don’t want to work full time, they want to work two or three shifts, or in high school, they’re going to give you the best. But um, and that’s totally fine with us. So that’s, that’s a little bit of our growth plans. You know, if we opened three stores last year, we’re going to open six stores this year. If I If all goes well, we’ll we’ll grow that number in the following years. And who knows where we’ll be by 2025. Maybe we’ll be closer to 40-50 stores?
Chad Franzen 22:21
You know, I’m not that familiar with franchising just does it put a short term strain on the company when you open up a new store.
David Leonardo 22:30
A short term strain. No, not really, if you have the if you have the processes in place to support a store, where did what it does is for right before a store opens that week, we’re visiting the store. So my team and I are out there supporting the franchisee helping train some of the employees really supporting them with their opening. And we do kind of have to dedicate some resources to that to that travel. So there is a little bit of travel. But that shouldn’t impact any of the other franchisees involved, we do operate our own store. So remember, the the founders who started the business, you know, they have seven stores that we consider company stores. And so we continue to operate those stores and everything we have tested everything we roll out to the franchise system, we first tested our company source. So that’s actually a good practice that we have. And obviously anything that a franchisee is paying for we’re paying for all of the fees, you know that they’re paying for royalties, marketing, all of that stuff the company stores are paying for
Chad Franzen 23:37
what do you most enjoy about what you’re doing now?
David Leonardo 23:43
I know kind of a controlled chaos, right? I think I think the most frustrating part and the most exciting part is, is really going into the office and and not knowing what’s going to present itself. But knowing that I have an amazing team at the office that’s going to do their best to resolve the problems. It really brings a lot of happiness to me that we’ve done a good job at bringing in some really good franchisees that understand the vision. And I try to tell my franchisees Look, I am going to make mistakes, we’re going to make mistakes, you’re going to make mistakes, I want to make sure that we’re working together to help resolve them. You know, we’re a young franchisor and we’d like to think that we’re at that we’re at that early stage before the tipping point. And so if you remember when five guys got big and crumbled now is going through a big burst age. I really feel like we’re at that early stage right before it starts really taking off. And so I’m really enjoying I’m really enjoying this smallness of us, right? We’re really small office, we have six employees. We’re running a million miles an hour and putting out fires and then spending time to figure out how to strategize long term.
Chad Franzen 24:55
You’ve been in you’ve been in franchising for a while now, as I mentioned, is there some advice that you Received maybe from a mentor or somebody along the way that you have found particularly valuable that you kind of that kind of stuck with you.
David Leonardo 25:09
Yeah, so, advice on the on a franchisor. So anybody who’s looking to maybe sell their business in and kind of grow it as a franchise, one of the bestest, best piece of advice I ever got, or received was the best deal sometimes it’s the one you don’t do. And so, your franchisees are, are a huge part of what you are as a company. And so don’t get enamored by the big check the big experience and even that person who has multiple brands under their belt, you want to really make sure that the person is a good fit for you. And, and that can really understand the vision and and as someone who’s not afraid of rolling up their sleeves, and so I think that’s something that I’ve really tried to kind of hold on to as a really good piece of advice from a franchisor standpoint, from a franchisee standpoint, I will tell you that a really good piece of advice is try to let go when appropriate. And so if you’re someone who is extremely extremely micromanager and and you you really can’t let go then chances are you’re probably end up with only one location, or very few locations. Those who are those who have you ever read articles about people who have 20, 30, 40, 50, hundreds of locations. Usually it’s because they’ve been able to develop a really good team that they can leverage and trust. And and you have to kind of look within to see if you’re that type of person.
Chad Franzen 26:45
I have one more question for you. But first, tell me how people can find out more information about Chill-N from both a customer and a potential franchisee standpoint.
David Leonardo 26:53
Sure, well, our website is chilln.com c-h-i-l-l-n.com. You could get information on our locations, franchising, and you can contact me as well. I’m at DavidLeonardo@chilln.com. And that’s l-e-o-n-a-r-do, so first name, last name at Chill-N. And yeah, we’d love to chat with anyone who’s interested in either being a customer coming down and we give away free ice cream for people who join our loyalty program. So you can even try it out for free. Or if by any chance you want to be that person who brings an amazing ice cream brand to your local community.
Chad Franzen 27:28
I’d love to chat to you about it. Last question for you when you go to Chill-N and you look at the at the big board there of ingredients and things like that. What, what’s kind of your combo of choice, man,
David Leonardo 27:40
I’m in love with an oat milk base with biscotti and some Reese’s peanut butter mix. Very nice. That’s my mix. That’s my go to.
Chad Franzen 27:50
Nice, very nice. Hey, David. It’s been great talking to you. Chill-N sounds very interesting. And I wish you the best of luck. Thank you so much for your time.
David Leonardo 27:56
Thanks a lot for your time chat. Absolutely. Thank you.
Chad Franzen 27:59
So long, everybody.
Outro 27:59
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