Where you decide to locate your unit can make or break your business.
Franchising with Smoothie King has its inherent benefits. It can certainly have more advantages than starting a business from scratch as they have done a lot of the work up front: they’ve created a solid business model, built a strong brand name and have developed the tools and systems needed to deliver robust marketing, training and support for their nearly 800 stores around the world.
But before you can ever realize the benefits of ownership, you have to figure out precisely where you’re going to locate your franchise. That’s where a great brand like Smoothie King outshines its competition. The old adage still rings true – location, location, location. By combining advanced technology, customer data and market analysis, Smoothie King is able to provide franchisees with site criteria that can increase traffic flow and drive unit growth.
“At Smoothie King, we are inspiring people to live a healthy and active lifestyle. In order to do that, we need to make our stores convenient and easily reachable,” said Smoothie King real estate manager John Gordon. “Parking and accessibility are paramount to a location’s success because our customers want to get their products quickly and continue on their way. We look for major arteries in a market where there is high traffic and easy guest access.”
The brand typically searches for end-cap, inline or freestanding sites that are 800 to 1,600 square feet, but also believes strongly in non-traditional locations such as mall kiosks, airports, universities and gyms. Gordon went on to emphasize that Smoothie King typically targets markets with a population of 30,000 or more that is within a seven-minute drive of a location.
In order to find an ideal location, Smoothie King leverages a variety of technological tools such as CoStar and LoopNet so its franchisees are prepared with the comprehensive, timely and accurate information needed to make the most informed commercial real estate decision possible.
“The analytics we can pull from these kinds of commercial real estate technologies help us and our franchisees validate our initial insight into the potential of a retail space,” said Gordon. “The data either reinforces the decision we want to make or forces us to look at it from a different angle. Success starts with a great location, and Smoothie King works with its franchisees in order to find the best possible location in each market.”
Gordon went on to say that Smoothie King also works with MasterCard to track and better understand consumer-spending behavior within a particular market to help franchisees recognize specific trends and trade areas that drive purchase. Ultimately, Smoothie King looks to its franchisees for input on their local markets before committing to any real estate decisions.
“Assisting franchisees with their sites is a team effort that combines the very best of our franchisees, our internal real estate advisors and the technology we can utilize,” added Gordon.
For more franchising information about Smoothie King, click here.
