Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine Issue I, 2014 | Page 30

MEGA

as we’re growing, I’ve tried to stay true
to the one-on-one time we had when
we were a smaller organization,” he says.
“It’s demanding from a time standpoint,
but I’d much rather have lunch or a late
afternoon glass of wine with a person
from our office than sit in front of a
computer screen for hours.”
Kulp, who has always worked in restaurants and bought into an existing

Kulp remains
highly aware
of the
juggling act
that is life.

KFC franchise in 2006, remains highly
aware of the juggling act that is life. “On
the back of all our birthday cards to employees, we describe the five balls that
we juggle in life as work, spirit, health,
friends, and family. Only one—work—is
rubber. If you drop it, it bounces back.
The other four are glass, so if you drop
them they break. We need to keep that
in perspective.”

BOTTOM LINE
Annual revenue: $250 million.
2014 goals: One real goal every year is to be the best operating restaurant
company in the country. In our operating plan for 2014 is $100 million in revenue growth through acquisition.
Growth meter: How do you measure your growth? It’s easy to
measure P&L and bottom line. Beyond that, the biggest measure of our success
is how many people we help reach their goals.
Vision meter: Where do you want to be in 5 years? 10 years?
In 5 years, we’ll be diversifying to keep up with our growth plan and will have
established a second flag under our holding umbrella. In 10 years, I would love
to own my own brand.
How is the current economy affecting you, your employees,
your customers? The biggest effect is on the competitive environment;
we’re now seeing competitors not historically placed in the value game, which
brings more pressure. On a positive note, we’re expecting good commodity
deflation in 2014, so that’s going to help us further compete in value. Beyond
that, we work in lots of urban trade areas where teams are still under financial
distress. The challenges our key employees are facing more broadly are affording healthcare, taking care of reliable transport, and finding enough hours
without working a second job.
Are you experiencing economic growth in your market? It varies
by region since we’re in nine states. Atlanta and Florida are experiencing some
growth, but Virginia and North Carolina are not.
What did you change or do differently during the economic
downturn that you are continuing to do? We did what most people
did: looked differently at every single line on our P&L. It made us a better
operating company because we found a lot of waste we weren’t focused on.
One thing we did was cut out any unnecessary investments in things unrelated
to the infrastructure.
How do you forecast for your business? We have a fairly sophisticated POS platform in our business that keeps us on top of things. As far as
growth, we educate ourselves a lot, attending conferences and reaching out to
industry executives to stay abreast of what’s coming and its implications on our
business and brands.
Is capital getting easier to access? Why/why not? Absolutely.
We’re in a little different situation, since we’ve operated from profitability in the

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Multi-Unit Franchisee Is s ue I, 2014

top tier of our brands for years, so we have constant access to capital. Even in
2009 in Florida, we found it. Today banks are competing for our financing.
Where do you find capital for expansion? We use both institutional
private equity and large syndicate banks. Our four-bank structure is Wells Fargo,
Cadence Bank, Bank of Montreal, and CrossFirst Bank. Our philosophy is that
the single most important thing we can do is secure our underlying and financial structure.
Have you used private equity, local banks, national banks,
other institutions? Why/why not? We’ve used the above-mentioned
banks and added in private equity because we wanted to remain conservative.
What are you doing to take care of your employees? There’s an
annual contest where we take the top 10 percent of the company with their
families for a three-day celebration in Key West. We bring high-performing
people to Kansas City for two days with our Ambassadors of Excellence program. We give them development training, not restaurant-related, but more soft
skills, like how to dress [