No corporate Bullshit: How Cheba Hut Breaks the Traditional Franchise Model

Recently, Cheba Hut* was named as one of the fastest growing franchise brands on the Inc5000 list. This is a great accomplishment for the up-and-coming franchise shop. While Cheba Hut is extremely honored to be included on this list, victories like these stem from many other factors that the brand deems more important.

Cheba Hut prides themselves in straying away from the corporate model that many brands seem to flock to. Cheba Hut likes the idea of franchising but sees the importance of granting each franchisee the freedom to make each location their own.

“A lot of people feel that their Cheba Hut is the only Cheba Hut. And we love that, that’s great, we want people to feel like their Cheba Hut is special to their location,” says Seth Larsen, Cheba Hut Chief Relationship Officer.

In Cheba Hut’s franchise model, it is encouraged that each franchisee builds their brand to make it viable for them. There’s not a lot of franchise brands out there that allow franchisees to do what they see fit for their best success and that is what Cheba Hut believes sets them apart from the rest. Their tight-knit group of franchisees is like a small family. With plans to have 25 locations by the end of Q1 in 2019, the sub franchise makes it top priority to connect with the new franchisees joining their franchise family.

“Our founder, Scott Jennings, approves each franchisee before signing them on. We do this because we want to get to know who we welcome into our family,” shared Larsen. “Scott wants to make sure that we’re getting straight shooters in our system. At the end of the day, the people that join our brand are what make us so successful in our industry.”

Shared Jennings, “I want to make sure each person that signs on with Cheba Hut is the right fit. It’s important that new franchisees believe in what we stand for and our outlook for the future. I like to say we’re looking for ‘cool money’.”

Aside from giving Cheba Hut franchisees the room to develop a personal brand, the importance of customer feedback is high on the list of priorities. The reviews Cheba Hut receives from their customers is what drives the brand.

They attribute much of their success to being able to invest in where they put their brand. Before any Cheba Hut location is chosen, the corporate team does a trial with the location by parking on street corners to sell Cheba Hut sandwiches to gain proper insight on their potential markets. They believe this is something that sets them apart from other sandwich franchise brands. They want to be a destination for consumers, while other franchise brands prioritize having that ‘A+’ location, Cheba Hut believes that their brand is strong enough to be placed at any location and find success due to the high volume of loyal customers.

“Making sure that we partner with the right people is imperative in keeping the brand cool but also to maintain high averaging volumes, while growing our brand at the same time. That's our main goal,” said Larsen.

Cheba Hut currently has 21 locations in seven states. The startup costs of a Cheba Hut franchise range from $336,000 to $678,000. The franchise fee is $40,000. For more information about franchising with Cheba Hut, visit http://franchise.chebahut.com/.