Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello everybody and welcome to All Things Considered Franchising podcast. I am your host Scott Scotty Milos and I've been around the franchising space. Well, seems like a lifetime. So welcome to the show.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Just a little FYI.
[00:00:14] Speaker A: I help people explore franchise ownership, see if it's the right path for them and more importantly, provide an educational journey to see how a brand that fit can fit your goals and lifestyle. I also educate my clients on how to validate and make a logical business decision as well as an informed decision.
On this show you'll hear directly from franchise owners as well as franchisors, leading exciting brands and people within and in the industry of franchising. You can always connect with me at scotty@the perfect franchise.com that is my email address.
Visit the websites at the perfect franchise.com or Scott Milo's franchisecoach.com you can also text and call me at 413-935-5111. Now let's get into today exciting episode.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of All Things Considered Franchising. I am your host Scott Scotty Milas, the founder of all things considered Franchising.com also the founder of ScottMylasFranchiseCoach.com which is an organization that devotes its time, effort and energy to providing an education, research, consultative approach, helping people take a look at closely at business ownership through franchising.
Of course, I'm also part of the perfect franchise. We are the educational, they are the educational wing, the referral network that I belong to Mark Schrooman. We are 35 to 40 of the top consultants in the country, so kind of very unique in the industry.
So today's guest is very interesting because as most of you know, if you knew my background, I have a lot of background in food in the franchising industry.
And today's guest is Charles Townsend iv, also known as Chad.
He is, along with his wife Lauren is the founder of Millie's Ice Cream, which is a chef driven brand founded in 2014 out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So all of you folks who are potentially either Eagles or Steelers fans, I'm not going to get into that conversation. They focus on handcraft grass grazed ice cream. We're gonna have to ask him about that. The company operates a model of centralized production which is kind of interesting because you're shipping out to your franchisees, to the franchisees, shipping, making the ice cream and then shipping it out. Revenue streams franchise can generate through physical brick and mortar shops, ice cream trucks, catering events and of course Retail pint sales.
It features chef driven recipes, dairy free gelatos and scratch made waffle cones. God, I'm getting hungry just talking about it. Chad, welcome to the show.
[00:02:58] Speaker C: Thanks so much, Scotty. Super excited to be on.
You know I've, I've been listening for a little while here now, so, so thrilled that, that you're having us on,
[00:03:09] Speaker B: doing some research and going back and, and I'm familiar with the brand because obviously as I said, you're in our. I had, I didn't mention that you are a part of the TPF portfolio, one of the half a dozen food brands that we have in our, in our portfolio. But your background is very unique because you came much like me. You started in the industry, food industry, very young but went to culinary school and then worked for actually some Michelin star restaurants.
And when you think about that, and then you got into handcrafted recipe driven ice cream.
Help the audience connect the dots because it's unique and it's very interesting. Tell us the story.
[00:03:57] Speaker C: Yeah, always been a food guy, you know, had a, had a mom and dad who just were very interested in home cooking. So I kind of grew up, you know, I don't have the traditional making ravioli on my grandma's knee type thing, but just had parents who were interested in cooking dinner, you know, pretty much every night, which, you know, in the age range I'm at was started to become less and less common. So I always enjoyed it and realized throughout my schooling, my high schooling, that I probably was not a candidate for higher education.
So I went to culinary school and started working. I'd worked in some restaurants, dishwashing, you know, that whole thing and really decided that I liked it. I loved doing it. I loved the kind of working with your hands. There was, you know, an incredible camaraderie with a team.
And so I just kind of continued to go on and on through the ranks once I graduated culinary school.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:05:08] Speaker C: I had, I had gotten very serious with my wife. Not to marriage point, but we had known that I was going to be married. She has a background in finance, had a really great job. I had always kind of fancied myself a Francophile.
Knowing that we were going to get married and that was going to be kind of the end of the opportunity to take a jaunt across the world.
I decided that I was going to write letters to 10 of column my most idolized French chefs, right. And said, hey, I'll come over and work for you for free.
Just love the opportunity to be in your kitchen.
I got responses from almost all of them.
Four of them said, sure, you can do it, here's what it looks like. And I ultimately settled on the one that I landed at with the intent of being there for two weeks.
[00:06:08] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:09] Speaker C: Just kind of like a working vacation. See what it's like. If I just sweep the floor every day. It is what it is. But I get to see what it's like in a three Michelin star restaurant.
It worked out well that I was able to pick it up relatively quickly and stay for a full season.
They offered me another kind of contract. As it, as it is in most of Europe it's, you know, one or two year contracts.
[00:06:36] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:37] Speaker C: And my wife didn't want to move over there at the time. I don't blame her. She had a, she had a good job and I was making, you know, 35, €35 a day.
But, you know, there was a romance to it. I, you know, it's funny, as we talk about it today, she says, you know, we should have done that, but you know, we can't.
The path that we took is what led us here to this moment.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: Wow. So flash forward.
Great experience in the kitchen. I'm sure you learned the operational side.
I think there's an old saying in food, you know, it's not hard work, it's long work, a lot of moving parts, you know, labor, product inventory. But you learn the front end, the back end, and let's flash forward. You probably end up coming back to the States.
Get married now. Ice cream.
It's a Millie's, promotes itself as a family run business and I think that's unique and I think that's very important in the structure of the franchise as well.
So how did that transition go from and how did Millie's come to be? I mean, why ice cream?
And then go into and maybe talk to us about this handcrafted recipe, grassrooted dairy free Dorados. Just kind of the product in general.
[00:08:03] Speaker C: Absolutely, yeah. So, you know, honestly, the whole core crux of the business was me thinking I was working a scam over on my wife.
I had left the restaurant that I was operating here, great restaurant, but I had no ownership stake in it and I wasn't going to get one. I ran it as the chef, so all decision making, everything ran through me. But I was, you know, just going to forever be a W2 employee.
Some days I wish I was a W2 employee, but you know, you know how it goes.
Most days I'm happy, I'm not, but some days I'M a be nice. Anyways, so. So I left that restaurant on good terms.
That was what we wanted to do at that point. We had no children. My wife still had a, you know, a great career in finance. She said, you can't, we can't find this restaurant that we are going to do while you're working 100 hours a week. You know, you're either pulling your attention from that to look for our thing or pulling your attention from our thing to look for this.
So why don't you leave while it's still. Everybody's still good. I found and trained my replacement.
You know, it was great.
And did some like odd jobs for buddies as we were kind of going looking at real estate.
There is an ice cream machine called a Pacojet.
Never heard of it. It is in a lot of high end kitchens. It's mostly used for ice cream, but you can use it for some other things.
So I said to my wife like, hey, I'd like to maybe buy a Pacojet. Figure out these recipes in advance.
Not for Millie's, for this restaurant, this to be determined restaurant.
She didn't fall for it, right? It was just me. I was bored. I was going to play around and make ice cream at our house.
But it was, you know, close to ten grand.
And so she said, fine, we'll get it, but you got to pay it off this summer.
So we started making ice cream in our house, selling it kind of quasi out of the back door of a friend's restaurant.
We had lines around the block.
[00:10:14] Speaker B: Interesting. Very interesting.
[00:10:16] Speaker C: Almost immediately and then, you know, small restaurants and small grocery stores were coming up to me saying like, hey, can you make this? Could you put this in pints? We'd love to. And I said, you know, I can't, obviously making this illegally, but we thought we might have something there.
So we built a small dairy plant, about 900 square feet and started pasteurizing. And that's been kind of our launch into the ice cream world.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: Interesting. Very, very interesting. We're talking to Chad Townsend. He's co founder along with his wife Lauren.
Millie's ice cream chef driven brand out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Operating now as a franchise. I currently have almost 20 stores opened. Fast approaching in development, close to 30 stores.
So you're slowly coming out of that embryonic stages that we call in franchising that, you know, kind of tweaking the operations, tweaking the marketing, relying on your franchisees for feedback, you know, kind of really spending a lot of time.
I guess the first question I have for you in regards to franchising. Why franchising?
Obviously, this could have been a corporate driven opportunity multiple. You didn't have to go outside of probably Pennsylvania if you really didn't want to. But what was the attraction to franchising your business?
Because obviously, if I'm guessing correctly, you opened a couple of corporate locations or corporate locations and then said, hey, how do we grow? And you looked at franchising. So walk us through the thinking to franchise the business.
[00:11:56] Speaker C: Yeah, you know, it really came about post Covid for us.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:12:01] Speaker C: As I think it did for a lot of emerging franchisors.
We realized there was kind of a glut of second gen real estate on the market.
You know, small cafes. We fit into a small footprint. Right. We have several locations that are sub 1,000 square feet.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: Interesting. Okay, so a small footprint, smaller build out.
[00:12:22] Speaker C: Yep.
And so we realized that that is a niche real estate space that is very hard to fill.
So if you have something that went out of business, not due to traffic concerns or whatever, but. But maybe somebody couldn't really make the math work through Covid as some folks couldn't, and we almost didn't.
We realized that there was a great opportunity here.
At the same time, you know, it occurred to us that ice cream is a community builder.
It just is. Right. It's one of those businesses that I could very easily, you know, follow a Chick fil, a model, a Chipotle, a Starbucks, something like that. I could find, you know, we have some open and operating locations in Florida. I could find somebody in the Georgia area who is a very qualified director of operations.
They go to the store, they do a cleanliness audit, they weigh some portions, they look at the P. Ls. Okay, great. You're doing good. Thanks. See you in a month, whatever that may be.
But me just hiring people and placing them, inserting them into a market doesn't get the community feel that we are trying to build.
[00:13:38] Speaker B: Okay, so it's a community driven brand. That's what you're trying to attract. I mean, I guess in essence it's easy to say, Chad, and correct me if I'm wrong, that there are very few people that walk into an ice cream store in a bad mood. I mean.
Right?
[00:13:54] Speaker C: I mean, it was far different.
[00:13:56] Speaker B: Or they're trying to get after their bad, bad mood. And you know, they're not looking for a glass of beer, a pint of beer to calm their nerves. They're happy. I mean, and that's community driven.
[00:14:07] Speaker C: Yep. And I, you know, we always joked about the, the, the most recent restaurant or my last restaurant I worked at had a, had an open kitchen with a glass wall that faced the front door. And we always joked that, you know, when, when a couple would come in, there was always one smiling ear to ear and always one, like looking around, you could tell they were saying, what's this gonna cost me?
[00:14:29] Speaker B: Right, exactly.
[00:14:30] Speaker C: We don't, we don't have that in ice cream. You know, it's, it's families, it's people who are celebrating. To your point, it might be somebody who's coming in because they had a lousy day and they just want a milkshake.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: Right. They want to get happy.
[00:14:47] Speaker C: Yep, exactly. And so those folks get to know the franchisees.
[00:14:53] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:14:53] Speaker C: And the franchisees get to know them.
[00:14:55] Speaker B: So we've taken the franchise route now let's flash forward. We're now into that franchise state.
I'm sure like any type of franchise that I've been associated with, there's sticking to the plan, the operational side, the marketing side.
So let's talk about overall investment level. Just give me a brief item. Seven. What's your range?
[00:15:18] Speaker C: Yep.
200 to 500.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: Okay. And the 500, I gather is based on a larger footprint.
[00:15:27] Speaker C: Larger, larger build out, ground up, adding a truck.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:15:32] Speaker C: Yep.
Multiple area development.
[00:15:34] Speaker B: If we were just looking at that 1500 square foot brick and mortar, are we talking somewhere between that 300, 400,000 range?
[00:15:44] Speaker C: Yeah, we're, you know, maybe.
[00:15:46] Speaker B: Give or take. Give or take.
[00:15:48] Speaker C: Yeah, probably, you know, somebody, my wife is gonna, is gonna kill me here. But you know, as we're just about to refile our fdd, but we are seeing construction costs for most of our spaces at this point hit in that 1200 square foot range.
Seeing construction costs in the like 150 to 200k range.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: Right. Well that's a great spot to be in that small thousand to fifteen hundred square feet. That's, you know the, when you look at the smart brands, the food brands that captured that, they've done very well in it. You know, nobody likes to walk into a 3,000 square foot restaurant and not see anybody in there, especially in non prime hours. So I mean it's.
So we.
[00:16:32] Speaker C: Real estate does not begin more guests.
[00:16:35] Speaker B: Right. So let's talk about the type of franchisee we're looking for.
You know, one of the, one of the big things today in franchising is this term called semi absentee, driven by management. So tell me a little bit about the franchisee that you're looking For. Are we looking for those empire builders? Are we looking for somebody to scale? Are you looking for somebody just to have one unit and you know, just kind of settle with that and then of course talk about, you know, the, the, the expectations and what you're looking for as far as management, is it owner, operator, looking for somebody who can do this on a semi absentee, manage, hire a manager, walk us through that platform for us.
[00:17:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
You know, like one of the things that we have talked about incessantly internally is like this franchisee avatar. Right. What do we want these folks to look at or look like rather? And Millie's requires a decent amount of time in your schedule for the first six months, right?
[00:17:47] Speaker B: 20 to 25 hours a week.
[00:17:49] Speaker C: Yeah, it might even be a little bit more than that. It might be, you know, 30, but we have a lot of franchisees who currently work 0 to 10.
[00:18:00] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:18:00] Speaker C: It is not.
[00:18:02] Speaker B: And it's just interrupted because this is community driven. I would think that you want somebody, a franchisee to open a store within their community. You're not looking for somebody to drive an hour to a location maybe as they scale in multiple locations, but initially you probably want somebody who's going to focus in on their community since it is a community driven lifestyle.
[00:18:25] Speaker C: Yes. And I, you know, and I think most folks who are looking at Millies, it is not going to be, you know, we would happily talk to a, you know, a gentleman or a woman who is interested in buying, you know, 50 of them and being fully passive. But, but that is, I don't think that that makes sense for them. For us, again, you know, we will, we will have a conversation with most folks before we determine, you know, if they're a right fit for the brand. But you know, you can do many ice cream shops, even in a smaller community, you can do two or three ice cream shops and two ice cream trucks in a community that is still a 20 minute, you know, kind of drive from every point.
And so we are looking for folks who, you know, oftentimes they're, you know, as you say, you know, call it 10 hours on the high end.
There's minimal administrative tasks. Right. As it's an ice cream shop, the schedule is pretty easy to put together.
More often than not, these folks are assembling events, booking their trucks, following up with people, billing those kind of things.
Post events, post weddings. We do a ton of weddings, ton of corporate events.
[00:19:50] Speaker B: Okay, great trucks.
[00:19:52] Speaker C: So it's, that's what it.
[00:19:53] Speaker B: So you're looking for somebody who has a lot of delegation understanding can manage.
You're not looking for somebody to be in your store x amount of hours a day, but you want somebody who's going to provide oversight and so forth, manage to manager sort of speak. So a lot of that semi absentee qualifications that as a coach that I remind people. It's interesting you mentioned that the comment about the person who wants to buy 50 and sometimes when you sit down with that person about 50 and say, well if you do one a year, that's 50 years. Why would I, why would I want to, you know, look at my growth in 50 years? So you know, I mean are you going to do five a year, you're going to do seven a year? It changes the perspective when you start talking to somebody.
So smart growth, it sounds like you're on a smart growth program in regards to the brand itself and the direction you want to go in.
You're focus driven on the brick and mortar, the truck, the kiosk, when you break out the revenue streams, and I think I mentioned this before, it's brick and mortar, then the food truck to do office parties, parties, birthday parties, whatever it is, then it may be the kiosk. What percentage of your franchisees and I know you're still, you're still growing, you're in that early adapting stage or slowly coming out of it have and the time frame from going to the brick and mortar to the truck. What are your expectations? What do you like to see?
[00:21:22] Speaker C: Yeah, so we are as we kind of refile and figure out, you know, the new year here upcoming, we are probably going to mandate people to have a truck.
[00:21:36] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:21:37] Speaker C: The truck is, it's a, it is a giant mobile billboard and it allows for, you know, challenges, you know, time to open is a big thing for us. We are, we want to get it right, we want to get site selection right. But we realize like we could hem and haw and you know, I could come up with five reasons why every space in the middle of Times Square is a bad location.
[00:22:00] Speaker B: Right.
[00:22:00] Speaker C: You know, and so we want to get it right, but we don't want people to just be, you know, nitpicking everything to death. The nice thing about the truck is most often, you know, sign a franchise agreement. You could probably have a truck on the road in sub 60 days and
[00:22:16] Speaker B: you can work through the distribution or distribution, you know, getting ice cream to that truck.
[00:22:25] Speaker C: Absolutely. Our distribution.
[00:22:27] Speaker B: Look, that's very smart. You're allowing somebody who's making a major investment to while they're looking for real estate. To bring in revenue. I mean, yeah, we don't want them,
[00:22:38] Speaker C: we don't want them to get to a point where they're like, okay, you know, I've put this franchise fee, you know, I've deployed this capital and I'm just, you know, and I'm looking to like, get something going, you know, and, and we don't want them to be making bad decisions on real estate. Just cut. Just because.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: Just because. Yeah, and that's, you know, that, that. And on the coaching. Coaching, consulting side. And again, Chad, it's very interesting because, you know, being experienced in the food industry and also understanding franchising and most of the people over at TPF do as well. A lot of times coaches and consultants don't say that to their clients.
That you gotta look at another 12 to 18 months from the time you sign your franchise agreements before you're even gonna open your door.
Now, could it be sooner? Could you find something? And most of it's finding real estate. Maybe you could find something sooner.
What's the fun part about your business, Chad? I mean, when I think of Millie's and I, you know, to me it's just a fun brand.
So what's the fun part? And the second part to that is one of the questions I always get when we talk about ice cream, yogurt or whatever is the seasonality of it. What do I do in the middle of winter?
That is just what went on in the northeast. The blizzard, 20, 20ft of snow, whatever it is. How do we work ourselves around that? And the mindset.
[00:24:02] Speaker C: Yep.
The fun part is the fact that you get to make moments for people. Right. We, you know, when we started Millies, we made this business. You know, we, we have this. It's Business School 101. Right. We've got this mission statement and everybody has the same kind of mission statement. We're going to be good to the community, pay people, use local, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right.
That was filed away in a drawer on day three and nobody'd ever looked at it. But we realized, like the greatest companies, the best companies have these kind of statements of purpose.
[00:24:36] Speaker B: Right.
[00:24:36] Speaker C: Lego has a fabulous one.
And people. And it's one sentence and it's distillation of that whole thing. So we focused really hard a few years ago to come up with ours. And that is crafting every scoop in every moment to make your day.
[00:24:52] Speaker B: Wow, that is awesome.
[00:24:53] Speaker C: So it's important that, you know, we've all been to restaurants, I've worked in them. I have worked in the Most pretentious places on earth. Right.
And there's a reason why Waffle House is so busy. Right. It's is good food. It's fine food. Right. But you go there, it's typically a fun atmosphere. It's, you know, if you're regular, you get something.
[00:25:14] Speaker B: Right.
[00:25:15] Speaker C: And so we all have a bar where you go in and the beer is there as you're walking in the door. And so we want to create that guest experience.
And that is really, truly a very fun part of this whole thing.
You're making somebody's day. You're making a moment for folks who are coming in the door.
[00:25:33] Speaker B: Interesting. Interesting. That's great. Well, Chad, you know, I'm sure we could spend the next hour and a half, two hours talking about ice cream. Who doesn't like to talk about ice cream? And gelato.
You know, the fact that you have gelato on the menu as well, that's intriguing, but it's been great to have. Any closing thoughts? Anything you'd like to share with the, the audience about Millie's and I've mentioned, I mean, obviously they can go to your website. If they want some more information, they can reach out to me. I'll get into that in a second. But anything else you want to share about Billy's and the opportunity that you're presenting?
[00:26:13] Speaker C: Yeah, we are seeing a lot of folks that are having a really great time doing it and also making money while doing it.
One of the core ideas that my wife and I have is there are there. There are a lot of.
There's a lot of room for ice cream everywhere.
And we want to. We want to get people. We don't want to be the next, you know, hoagie shop that is competing with people across the street. We want people to be very successful.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: Great, great. And just going back to that one other question I asked. You. That seasonality thing. I imagine having the food truck allows you to continue to do birthday parties, corporate events.
Is there anything else that people should in the back of their mind saying, well, you know, what am I doing in the wintertime with an ice cream shop? I mean, what other thoughts do you have on that that you could share?
[00:27:08] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, yeah, you know, I would be lying if I said there wasn't a significant drop off in the winter. We, we have a model that allows a small enough fixed cost burden that you still break even in January with, you know, 10 inches of snow on the ground.
Okay. And then people shooting out of the doors in, in mid February when it hits that's right.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: That's what it's right. Well, we've been talking to Chad Townsend along with his wife Lauren. They are co founders of Millie's Ice Cream, which is a chef driven ice cream brand. Handcrafted ice cream.
Sounds like a great menu. Founded in 2014, as I mentioned, out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Currently almost 20 stores open, getting ready to open a couple of new ones. And of course they have close to 30 in development, which is a great, great, great achievement in the short time that you've been franchising. So if anybody is interested in learning more about Millie's Ice Cream, you can reach out to me at scotty@the furclickfranchise.com or reach out to Chad directly. Go to their website.
Chad, it's been great talking to you and I hope we can get you back on the show six months, 12 months from now and kind of give us an update where you are.
But I am looking forward to ordering some ice cream and haven't shipped to me, hint, hint, hint to our listening audience. But anyway, this has been another episode of All Things Considered Franchising. I am your host, Scott Scotty Milas, the founder. Check out all the episodes on your favorite podcast channel or go to all things considered franchising.com you can also contact me at Scotty at the perfect franchise.com Go to my personal website, scottmylasfranchisecoach.com or the perfect franchise.com if you need any assistance, guidance and education, researching business ownership. That's where my strengths and attributes come in as far as helping clients go down that path. So until next time, go out and if you're near a Millie's, I certainly will tell you to go try it because from what I hear, it's just outstanding and I'm looking forward to ordering some. But Chad, best of you and Lauren and I look forward to connecting again.
[00:29:27] Speaker C: Thanks so much Scotty.
