Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine Issue IV, 2012 | Page 30
D OM I N A T O R S
It turned out to be a life-changing move.
For the next six years he made the store
more profitable than it had ever been, and
in the process realized that he knew how
to run a business. Of course, after making
it successful, he turned around and sold
the store for a hefty profit. He was just
29 years old.
The convenience store was his first
taste of operating a business, but there
would be much more to come. In the
early 1990s, Knobelock looked at a variety of franchise brands. “There were a
lot of company-owned franchise stores in
Houston back then,” he says. “Some of the
franchise opportunities I could have had
at the time were in other cities and states,
and I wanted to stay in the Houston area.”
He says it was also important for him to
sell something he believed in. “I loved the
Church’s Chicken brand. I ate there, and
I knew I could sell that.”
So he sold his home, his car, and his
convenience store and used the proceeds
to purchase and open his first Church’s
unit in 1992 in Houston. In fact, he was
Church’s very first Houston franchisee. And
how did that work out? He recouped his
initial investment in the first 8 months of
operation. He continued to add Church’s
units, then in 2003 began adding Little
Caesars Pizza to his portfolio. Today he has
34 Church’s and 15 Little Caesars locations
across five southern states (Texas, Arkansas,
Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida). And in
the Houston market, he has a commanding presence with both brands, with 18
Church’s and 13 Little Caesars. And he’s
served as president of the Houston area
Church’s Chicken Marketing Co-op since
it was founded.
Knobelock will be the first to tell you
that he has ADD tendencies. “I discovered
that what I like to do is search out locations
and potential sites, get the deals going,
get the units built, and then move on to
the next project,” he says. This character
trait helped him discover that he needed
great people and managers around him to
oversee the stores once they were open.
Knobelock says he has a great crew, which
frees him to focus on his sweet spot: expansion and growth. His company, MSK
Enterprises, even has its own construction
department, which does about 90 percent
of the building themselves, he says. “This
allows us to do it for about half the cost
that a typical franchisee would have to pay
to get started.”
His ongoing quest for development recently led him to test the waters of opening
his own restaurant concept in Houston,
Dekkers Mesquite Grill. The idea began
when a friend approached him with the
idea of converting a nearby burger joint
into something more. “I knew he was a
great chef and so we teamed up, bought
the property, and built a new restaurant
from the ground up,” he says. Dekkers,
a fine dining establishment with a large
mesquite grill and rotisserie, opened in
September 2011. The concept has done
so well (Knobelock estimates sales will
top $3 million in the first year) that he’s
already planning to build and open a fine
Italian restaurant nearby in the near future.
He hasn’t turned his back on franchising. Next up for Knobelock are more Little
Caesars locatio