Franchise Update Magazine Issue II, 2013 | Page 58

Grow Market Lead

By Eddy Goldberg

Variable Speed
Transmission
P

Quick response followed by slow,
steady diligence

apa Murphy’s Take ’N’ Bake
Pizza must be doing something right. In fact, the country’s fifth-largest pizza chain
is doing a lot of things right.
The Vancouver, Wash.-based pizza
chain, with 1,350 units in 38 states,
Canada, and Dubai, recently ranked
first in two consumer surveys. Technomic’s 2013 Consumer Restaurant
Brand Metrics Report
named Papa Murphy’s
the top chain overall
among full-service
and limited-service restaurants. Papa
Murphy’s also was ranked the #1 pizza
chain in the 2013 Consumer Picks survey from Nation’s Restaurant News and
WD Partners. That follows previous
awards, including Zagat’s top-rated
pizza chain in 2010, 2011, and 2012.
The brand is doing something right
with its franchisees as well, earning Franchise Business Review’s
Franchisee Satisfaction Award
several years running.
“Blame” this success partly
on a franchise development
process that starts with a speedy
response, and then downshifts
to a more measured pace for the
due diligence phase. And today,
the 32-year-old brand—which
provides no seating and does no
cooking in its stores—seems primed
to expand further beyond its base in
the Pacific Northwest.

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The big three

Scott Mellon, vice president of franchise
sales at Papa Murphy’s, says there are
three big things he looks at in the company’s franchise sales process: 1) a quick
response, 2) a face-to-face disclosure
meeting, and 3) the due diligence phase.
1) Quick response. “When we’re
getting information in, we want to
make sure we’re reaching out to folks
as quickly as possible,”
says Mellon. People
complete an application for a wide variety
of reasons, he says.
“Wherever they are in their life, it’s a
compelling enough reason for them to

apply,” he says. “It’s important to have
that conversation when they’re in that
frame of mind. We want to engage with
them at that point—and that could change
quickly. Or maybe they’ve filled
out applications
for three or four
other concepts,
and we want to
be the first person
to touch them.”
An application
Scott Mellon
triggers an automated email response, which is quickly
followed by a phone call. If an application arrives after-hours or on a weekend,
the call is made the next business day.
“Within #B