Longtime Wild Birds Unlimited Franchisee Explains How the Brand Not Only Survived, But Thrived During the Pandemic

Bird-watching may be one of mankind’s oldest and most soothing hobbies, and just as the practice has endured over the year, so has Wild Birds Unlimited, a bird feeding franchise with nearly 350 locations across North America and 40 years in the business.

Jeanette and Dennis McDaniel have had a Wild Birds Unlimited franchise in the family since 1989, when Jeanette’s sister signed on for a location in Kettering, Ohio. Through the decades, the brand and the family have seen both ups and downs, but according to Jeanette, they’ve been mostly ups. 

“When my sister opened her Wild Birds Unlimited franchise, it was a whole new concept in our area,” she said. “She did a very good job getting the business started and growing it, and her store was always in the top 10% of stores for sales.”

Jeanette, who had limited experience in franchising, was still able to make a serious contribution to the business when her sister decided to move on. 

“I had some background in real estate management, mostly doing administrative work. Before, I worked in the insurance industry,” she said. “I worked with my sister for a year when she first opened, but then I was a stay-at-home mom for 14 years. I came back to work at my sister’s store in 2007, became part owner in January 2009 and as of January 1, 2010, I became the new owner.”

Needless to say, the world changed greatly between 1989 and 2010, but Jeanette, and Wild Birds Unlimited, readily changed with the times. 

“There was a different paradigm back then — the store was much more mom-and-pop,” she said. “When I came back, nothing had been automated computer-wise. I started working on getting things up to where they needed to be as far as automated inventory management.”

For the McDaniels, acquiring the Wild Birds Unlimited franchise offered not just business support and financial stability, but a potential nest egg. 

“My sister grew a successful business in her time,” she said. “I came in just thinking she has a good thing going, and if I don’t mess it up, I’ll have a nice living.”

The McDaniels saw real potential to grow with the brand, which had modernized itself and was now offering online shopping opportunities, customer loyalty programs and modern marketing campaigns. For Jeanette, the opportunity was too great to pass up. 

“After a year or so, I figured I had to do more than just not mess it up. After getting everything automated, I looked into changing up our advertising strategy and adopted the brand's best practices for customer loyalty with our Daily Savings Club. Changes like that started resulting in increased sales,” she said. 

That’s when the McDaniels’ Wild Birds Unlimited franchise really took flight. “In my sister’s last year of owning the store sales were at about $700,000,” she said. “This year we’ll be real darn close to $1.6 million if we don’t crack it.”

Not only did adopting Wild Birds Unlimited’s updated business strategy allow her to more than double sales in a decade, it allowed her to hand over day-to-day operations to a store manager so she could focus on big-picture strategy and, eventually, opening a second store with her husband. 

All the while, the leaders at Wild Birds Unlimited franchise support center stayed ahead of the curve, pivoting the business to a more online and curb-side delivery-driven model just in time to cash in on the surge in bird feed sales during the pandemic. 

“Jim Carpenter, the founder and CEO, and the people he’s placed around him are always very forward-thinking,” said Jeanette. “A few years back when I was on the franchise advisory council, he started saying we have to have a different online presence. If Chewy.com, our main competition online, digs too deep into the bird feed market, we’re in trouble. If they hadn’t had that foresight, it would have made a huge difference because when stores had to shut down, we could stay open via our online store. We were ready for the pandemic. The volume of our online business has gone up so tremendously that all of a sudden there are new needs that need to be met online, and we kicked it up a notch to make it work on a higher level.” 

“Our brand has been with the American public for decades, and we’ve weathered storms before. From the market crash in ‘87 to Sept. 11 to the housing crisis in ‘07, we’ve found ways to keep franchisees flying high and customers connected to nature,” Paul Pickett, the brand’s chief development officer said. “When it came time to protect franchisees like the McDaniels during the pandemic, Wild Birds Unlimited took swift action to make sure business could continue safely and effectively. We actually won an award for it.”

Wild Birds Unlimited has grown a business empire that helps people across North America connect with nature and find peace in their own backyards. Overall, Jeanette can hardly recall any time over the decades that the brand really struggled or lost direction. Even with all the calamity seen in 2020, Jeanette says sales are up 20%. 

“The ups and downs that I’ve experienced haven’t been too bad. We’ve had a couple years down a percent or two, and every year presents its challenges, but I haven’t faced anything that significant,” she said. “I don't want to that say we’re recession-proof, but when people lockdown and stay home, they want to feed the birds. People can’t travel, they can’t go out to eat, so we’ve had a big increase in new customers. As people are looking for things to do with their family, systemwide our sales are up considerably in 2020.”

Currently, the McDaniels have seen such a high demand that Jeanette is looking to increase the space of her Kettering location. “One week we had to store 14 tons of bird feed. Where do we put it?” said Jeanette. “We’re hoping to use this additional space for stock as well as an educational center once we can start doing in-store events again. Also, we’ll use it as a source for our local charitable partnerships to promote their efforts.”

The investment level to open a Wild Birds Unlimited location is $170,382 to $281,606. To learn about franchising opportunities with Wild Birds Unlimited, please visit www.wbufranchise.com.