Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine Issue II, 2013 | Page 48

M U L T I - B R A N D
probably a mistake, he says in retrospect.
“I no longer had control of my destiny,”
he says. With the revolving-door CEOs
not taking Johnny Rockets in the direction of a public offering, he decided again
to start over as a franchisee. In 1998, he
and his family moved to Providence, R.I.,
where he grew up, to open more Johnny
Rockets and consider other concepts.
When Teitelbaum died in 2000 at the
age of 61, Sugarman was bereft. “Ronn
was an amazing influence in my life. He
was a great guy, an influential partner and
mentor. The most intelligent people you
meet in life have the ability to simplify
things—even in franchising. Ronn had
that,” he says.
Throughout his association with
Johnny Rockets, Sugarman has continued to be an innovator, using his own
money a couple of years ago to create
a new, updated design prototype for
the chain, the first change in 25 years.
Early resistance from corporate and
other franchisees abated when the company tested the prototype in a couple of
company stores, along with Sugarman’s
stores. The experiment was a success,

“Don’t ever chase
others—you’ll
always be looking at
their butts.”

and many Johnny Rockets are adopting
elements of the new design.
Today, Sugarman, with his son Jason,
owns 17 Johnny Rockets in Rhode Island, Minnesota, California, New York,
Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, as well as 3 Original Soupman
locations, and 2 Yeh! Yogourt Glace and
Café units in Montreal. He also has a
couple of new concepts brewing that he’s
not yet ready to talk about yet.
His favorite activity remains searching out the newest, most exciting trends
and concepts, wherever that takes him.
“There’s a saying: You go, you get. You
don’t go, you don’t get,” he says. “I’ve
always gone after things whether it was
to the New York Trade Show to do
rock’n