🍟 Week 18: Toppers Pizza
A pizza franchise + ANOTHER acquisition
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To franchise fans,
Good morning and hope you had a great weekend filled with turkey, friends, and family. Also, happy Hanukkah to those who started celebrating last night!
If you celebrate Christmas and are now scrambling because you haven’t bought any presents yet despite the massive supply chain issues, here is a great gift guide from the team at Morning Brew that always gives me some good ideas!
Today’s Rundown:
Headlines: Another acquisition
Breakdown: Toppers Pizza
Twitter Watch: The Story of Franchise Legend Den Fujita
Let’s get to it!
Franchise Headlines
Franchise Group Acquires W.S. Badcock
The Players
Franchise Group, the owner of brands like Pet Supplies Plus, The Vitamin Shoppe, and more - just acquired home furnishing company W.S. Badcock for $580M💰💰
Founded in 1904, W.S. Badcock Corporation operates 383 stores in eight southeastern states comprised of 68 corporate locations and 315 independent dealer owned stores.
The Scoop
Another big money acquisition in the franchise world! To me (part of) the beauty of franchising is how much it increases an entrepreneur’s surface area for luck.
If you start a business, franchise it, and grow your brand via your franchisees locations - quite simply people just start noticing. That could lead to more interest from franchisees, from PE Groups looking to make investments, or in this case, massive holding companies looking to acquire brands outright.
You can read the press release here.
More Headlines
Jack in the Box Invests in Robotics to Curb Labor Issues
Robotics to replace labor will be a trend that will continue with the big players
Papa Johns to Grow in Kenya & Uganda
The pizza giant only has so many markets that they haven’t entered yet
Breakdown: Toppers Pizza
Fast Facts
Background
Founded in 1991; franchising since 2000
Based in Wisconsin; 67 units open
Toppers’ menu features specialty pizzas with toppings such as oven-roasted tomatoes, mac 'n cheese and tater tots, along with the company's signature cheesy breadsticks called Topperstix
Fees + Investment
Royalty: 5.5% of gross sales
Brand Fund: 3.3% of gross sales
Franchise Fee: $30,000
Initial Investment: $314,075 - $530,000
Financial Performance
The below table illustrates average gross sales for Toppers units in 2020
The Wolf’s Take 🍟
Toppers was founded by Scott Gittrich, an ex-Dominos employee, who started working there while attending the University of Illinois in 1984. He worked his way up to director of operations for a group of Domino's franchises before deciding in 1991 to go on his own in the pizza biz by founding Toppers.
Aside from the cool story of the founder, I like the numbers too. They show consistency amongst their 67 locations, as well as a steady increase the longer your store remains open.
Dominos is the clear benchmark every pizza franchise should be comparing themselves to - they have an initial investment of $152k-$668k, and an estimated avg annual revenue of $1,177,696 per location.
Comparing them to Toppers, we see that the Toppers investment has a lower ceiling, and after a few years you aren’t too far off from Dominos revenue. To me this is absolutely worth exploring if you’re interested in owning a pizza restaurant!
Recent News
Twitter Watch 👀
I wrote this thread yesterday, and it is by far my favorite story I’ve ever written about in franchising. It tells the story of the man who brought McDonald’s to Japan.
Follow @franchisewolf and give it a read!
That’s it for this edition of The Wolf Report. Feel free to reply with any questions or feedback, or leave a comment. If someone sent this your way and you haven’t subscribed yet, you can also do that below. Thanks and see you next week!
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