FranDev Players: Robert Maynard, CEO of Famous Toastery

Robert Maynard, CEO of Charlotte, North Carolina-based Famous Toastery, has what you could call the anti-sales pitch to potential franchisees:

Slackers beware.

“It’s not for the weak of heart,” Maynard likes to warn potential newbies in the contemporary breakfast-and-lunch chain. “This is basically a fine-dining restaurant opened during the day. You have to have the passion to serve. So if you’re someone who really sees this as just an investment, this isn't the right concept. There's many concepts that are more turnkey.” 

His anti-pitch doesn’t seem to scare people off. The brand, hatched in 2007, has grown to almost 30 stores since 2014. Now, after a well-timed pause in expansion, Famous Toaster is ready to start growing once more.

1851 Franchise spoke to Maynard about his brand and how to effectively manage growth.

1851 Franchise: Tell me about Famous Toastery.

Robert Maynard: We’re a higher-end breakfast, lunch and brunch concept. We call it “better breakfast” because everything is made that day for that day. We say it's fast-food made fresh. We're the antithesis of the greasy spoon.

1851: When did you decide on a franchising model to grow and why?

Maynard: We started as a brand in 2005, and we started franchising in 2014. We had three locations, and we were just getting a lot of people asking us to open in various places. But building restaurants is very expensive, so we looked into franchising. I felt that we had the right team and the right concept. At the time, we didn't know much about franchising, but we dove headfirst into the franchise world, and started opening stores and training people. 

1851: What are the biggest hurdles to successful franchise growth?

Maynard: Picking the right person, and having the right team You got to have the right team, the right support and you got to have the right people that you sign on. You have to know when to say no to potential franchisees. But there's no silver bullet, no way to see what the best franchisee is going to look like. 

1851: How has COVID-19 affected your franchise growth?

Maynard: We were not franchising going into the pandemic. We had actually stopped franchising for a while to just grow into our growth. We had just grown a lot, and running a Famous Toastery is not like running a little 1,000 square foot store. A lot of our locations are 3,500 to 5,500 square feet. They're big. So we had actually put new franchises on the back burner, and we were in a really good spot when the pandemic happened. We fared pretty well, all things considered. It could have been a lot worse, let’s put it that way. We had a decent amount of locations up from last year's numbers. Some locations are doing the same numbers as last year, and some are lagging behind because of where they're located.

1851: What are common mistakes you see franchisors make when trying to grow?

Maynard: Look, selling franchises is easy. But selling to the right people, getting them open, and having them be successful — well, that's a whole ‘nother conversation! You can get people excited to open a franchise, but what you really have to do is get them not excited. You can't sell the sizzle on something like this. You have to sell them on the tough days. The days when someone's not going to come to work. The day four people are out. The day when you have two-hour waits on a Saturday and Sunday people yelling at you. That's what we like to tell people. You have to let them know how hard the work is. We try to get them into a busy location on a weekend to see how crazy the kitchen is. We also try to get them into a slow store to show them how that is. They’re two very different animals. Sometimes you can come out of the gate doing really well, other times it takes a while. 

1851: What are your plans, your goals for 2021? Will you start franchising again?

Maynard: Yes, we started the process, and we've been looking to sign deals this year. We have nine corporate stores already, so we're really looking to focus strictly on the franchise side going forward, and manage what we have on the corporate side, and really put our eggs in that basket.