Marissa Goodman:
Perfect. This is a new platform for all, for both of us at least. So I appreciate you all joining. And yeah, so what is it? Is it time Perfect at this time? I want to just say hello to everyone and thank you for joining us today for TOI Consultant Catch up, Lein. I. My name is Marissa Goodman and I'm the Development Director for TOI. I'm thrilled to introduce you as very special person, Brianna Keith. She is the founder of TOI. We've had an incredible year at TOI so far. I'm really eager, eager, I could to share some of the major highlights, updates and exciting plans for the yeare. So this is really informal. So I don't know how this platform works. If you're able to ask a question at any time, please do so or we'll save some time at the end to answer any questions as well. So Brianna, the energy around us is really electric and you know, we, you and the team have been working so hard. And so let's just start off by saying, you know, talking about the growth this year, like how many, how many stores have opened? You know, we did just had a huge milestone. What is the pipeline for the rest of the year and and you did say, I think October is going to be really busy, so you kind of touch on all that.

Brianna Keith:
Yes, so hi everyone. I'm Brianna Keith from to and we had a very, we are having a very big year. Like Marissa mention, I'm actually in Georgia right now, opening our 15th store of the year in Marietta, Georgia, which will be store number 51. Two weeks ago we had store 50, which was super, super exciting and it was in our backyard. It was in Virginia which was kind of special to. So you know, we had a busy year so far, but we actually have eleven more to go by the end of the year. We're all kind of trying to squeeze in the openings before the holidays. So we still got our work cut out for us, but we will open around 26 stores this year, which will be a pretty big increase from last year opening 17. So yeah, we're super excited. We're entering really great new markets but also expanding into current markets this year. We started out with three California stores and we are ending up with eight. By the end of the year, we still have three more to go. So that's been really amazing. We've gone into brand new markets like EL Paso and a suburb of Pittsburgh, suburb of Philly. So like really different and they've all been really successful. So it's just exciting to continue to expand all over the nation.

Marissa Goodman:
Perfect. Thanks. Oh, and also just for all of you on here, there is a chat and Q and A at the top. I just saw that. So if at any point in time you do have a question, I just checked us in there and we will get to those. So thanks for sharing that, Brianna. You know, we talk about our growth and how many stores are opening. What do you believe are the key differentiators really that are attracting so many new franchise and allowing us to expand so quickly?

Brianna Keith:
I feel like there's a few, I think one the the NA natural attraction is just our, our aesthetic that translates directly to the experience when franchisees do get to go visit in The Store. Everything is warm and inviting and live plants and real wood and it's a very, very communal feel, very welcoming feel. And then when you pair that with our super fresh offerings, making our juices and house all the toppings of our toast and house sourcing local produce, everything just wraps it all together and you can really see and feel the value of everything you're getting in the freshness. But I also think it really EN captures everything. We have an amazing coffee program, we have the the juice bar concept with cold press juice smoothies and bowls, no added sugar in any, all of the all and any of them. But then of course our gourmets as well, which is our specialty, which makes that majority of our sales. And so there's there's something for everyone whether they want something quick that juice the coffee or substantial food. And I think that's really the beauty of it too, is that it's there is something for everyone. No matter how large of a group you walk in with, there's something that everyone will prefer and enjoy. And so that just makes it very appealing that we're not putting ourselves in a little box that's only, you know, more of a niche for, for everyone, absolutely.

Marissa Goodman:
And and that's what really resonates with people and would you know, and this is, you know, ideal like we, you know, TOI has a certain vision in a certain partner that we want to, you know, that we're looking for What what qualities do you look for in a franchise that kind of align with the TOI vision?

Brianna Keith:
Yeah, I would say the number one thing is really the passion about the product, the brand or our story, our mission and people who generally want to be a part of it. I think that's the only way we're going to be sustainable for many years to come. As people who are truly excited about the brand, we want partners that believe in the brand like us and also want to expand in their community. We don't want someone that thinks will be fun is in it for a few years and then get bored now and want to move on to the next thing. We generally want people who want to be part of the movement and that goes a long way. You know, it's of course a lot of work owning your own business, but if you're passionate about it and it truly excites you, then it doesn't feel like working more and it's very rewarding and you really get to be a part of the community and educate everyone on on our products and the brand and really just genuinely love everything about it.

Marissa Goodman:
Yeah. And I think it's really important also to touch on a little bit, you know, it's in franchising as a whole, you know that the word semi absent, we don't really love it because, you know, for an excess successful business you're going to want to be hands on. Can you talk about how important that is and what we're looking for is fine as far as like hands-on commitment for from a franchises from the beginning?

Brianna Keith:
Yes, Yes, that's something that super super important to US-As a brand. We do realize people are not doing this to create themselves a job and be in the one store every day for the rest of their lives. But it is so important to be there in the beginning, at least for the first six months to a year, really building the team. That's truly the number one thing we can. We are giving you everything else. We have all the resources for it. But at the end of the day, we can't physically be in your store to build your team and manage the team. And that's so important because if you have a great team, they're going to take care of the customers, they're going to still be reliable and show up to work and perform even when you're not in The Store. And that definitely takes time, especially in the restaurant industry. So having that presence there, really making sure that the team is a trained but motivated and truly appreciated and they will take care of you. I'm really getting to know the customers as well. It's so, so important and that is, you know, no matter how big we grow, we're always going to feel like a small company because everyone's going to know the owner of their local tosti, which is super, super important. And then the day people want to support someone, they know they want to support a person, which is, and you know, we know that first hand. So being in there, someone who really wants to be the face of The Store out in the community. And then that way when they do slowly start to step back and look for store number two and furthermore, three and four, the foundation is laid, you know, The Store number one, you have a great team involved where now you can start working on the business instead of being in the day to day. But in the beginning it is so important to be hands on.

Marissa Goodman:
So we do have a couple questions that came in, I'll, I'll just get to them as we go. How long from contract signing to open are you saying?

Brianna Keith:
Yeah, So on average it's around eleven to 13 months. We have seen it gone go up to two years when we're waiting for a building to be built, it has gone as short as six months, but on average it's around twelve months. Just the main two things are real estate selection which is the most important but can be the most frustrating because sometimes the landlord will take a few weeks just to get back to us and then also permitting like in DC, it's a minimum of 90 days. It can get dragged out for a few months, but we have seen it much shorter where it only takes a week or two for franchise consultants Also, like on here and others as well, but a key component for any brand that you know that they're going to show their clients is the level of support from the franchise. Or can you kind of walk us through the journey from a new franchise, from what a new franchisee to the moment they signed to the grand opening and and thereafter?

Brianna Keith:
Yeah, Yeah. So I see our support is very hands on. Everything about our company is very hands on. Everyone's very passionate about it. So soon as signing the FDD, we have a kickoff meeting with our senior Project Manager who has what we call steps to success and it's every little detail that you need to complete after signing up until grand opening and she takes you through that some something really exciting that just happened this month is we brought in construction project management in house, which has already been so great because now he is very hands on, he'll he'll fly three times out to the site to make sure everything's perfect. So that, you know, we were already working with him prior, we actually coached him to come full-time and so we're really excited about that addition. So that's another layer that folds into it. And then around 90 days out the rest of the team gets involved, the marketing team, our training team, scheduling, all of that, really ensuring every step the way it's covered. But of course, post-opening is just as important, if not even more. So we immediately start weekly calls after with our director, Field Manager and she takes you through everything and having those weekly calls. There's so many, there's going to be so many little things that come up, so always having those and really Honing into, you know, scheduling inventory, any little pickups that come along the way and then moving to monthly calls will be with our Vice President of Franchise operations where she'll now host those calls at more higher level business, fine tuning operations really just kind of holistically helping and seeing where the business is, where we need to improve and when we are ready for location number two, Honing in on there and then getting back connected with our senior project management to kind of restart that process.

Marissa Goodman:
Perfect. The question that came in here is a space required? How big is the space? Number of staff required? Store hours?

Brianna Keith:
Yeah, that's a great question. So we really like to stay around 1400 sq ft, say no less than 1200 sq ft. We do have some stores that are a little bit bigger around 2200 sq ft, but we truly haven't seen, you know, bigger store correlate to more sales. So we like to have, you know, a smaller environment, more intimate, more personal. Our hours operation always starts seven M till 05:00 P.M.. There is an opportunity to extend. We do have a lot of stores that are 77, but we always like to start 75 because it's a nice ten hour shift. It's technically kind of one shift, staggering. Once you extend those extra two hours, you kind of need a whole another set of employees to to split the day off. And as staffing goes, we always when you're opening your very first store, say to at least hire twelve to 18 people, just knowing the nature of the business, some people are not going to show up on the first day, some people are not going to show up on their second week or you'll have to let someone go. But once people really get settled in and trained and really having a good team involved, it depends on full-time to part-time ratio of employees, but you could have between six and eight. I would say it's on average once everyone's trained and you know you're not having as much turnover.

Marissa Goodman:
So then another question in here it says what are the top stores doing in revenue? How is validation?

Brianna Keith:
Yes, Yes. So our top stores as maybe you guys saw on our FTD, we kind of have a wide range, our top stores are doing a million and over. I think something that's didn't really exciting this year with the 15 that we well 14, about the 15 that we open is all of them are on track to do way over our A UV. And I think that's just a testament of, you know, the learning from as we go choosing A plus locations, being super particular with our partners and our operators and also our marketing, you know, I think our marketing side has really grown Since we started franchising. So a combination of all those we've are having a very, very strong year with all the opening so far and validation to validation Great, right, Cause I, I know myself, I set up personally one-on-one validation calls all the time, but talk a little bit about validation.

Brianna Keith:
Yeah, Yeah, validation super important and it's going well for us. I mean, we're, we're trying to find brand ambassadors in our partnerships. Like I mentioned earlier, it's so important. So you know, also because we're looking for owner-operator kind takes them a few months to be able to step back and and focus and take a call. But it is something that's really important to us and I think it's exciting really getting partners in different markets as well and different time in the system. We're now having a lot of people to kind of. Pull from because some people want to talk to someone who newly opened or has been in the system for two years or is on the West coast or in a very suburban market vs a more urban market. So Yeah, I don't hopefully that answer that

Marissa Goodman:
No, it did absolutely. So I know in one of our meetings a couple of weeks ago you were talking about like how great that these grand openings are and what those numbers are. Can you kind of talk about the numbers that you've seen or like how great these grand openings are? I think was it Newton Square P? I think that was The Place. Right? Yeah. Kind of talk about that because that's pretty impressive.

Brianna Keith:
Yeah, we had some of our biggest openings this year, actually our number one opening, Hobo and held the record in 2023, but Orange Village, Ohio beat it out this year. But also besides that Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, which is a suburb of Philly, is one of our biggest goal is always $10,000 for the weekend, but our top ones were doing over 13 and it's really exciting to see New Times Square for example. You know, grand opening Saturday is is always huge and typically it's one of the busiest days for for the first year. But what has been really interesting is Saturday, we had an amazing day and then Sunday was even busier and the next weekend we did the same volume. And so you really can see going in these new markets as people love the promotion, they get excited about it. People are happy to stay in line, but there's also a chunk of people who purposely kind of want to avoid that. So you know, getting brand awareness out and really, you know, even if they're not coming on the first day, it's, they're coming the next day or the next weekend and their sales have been increasingly, you know, continuing to go up, which has been amazing. We open in Mount Lebanon and Pittsburgh, a suburb again right outside Pittsburgh, and something that has never happened before is they were actually busier the second weekend than the first weekend they did 13,000 weekend, they did 14,000 the next weekend, which is incredible. And I think that's also just a testament to consistency, brand awareness organically, people getting word out, going and then coming back and bringing their friends and their family and whoever.

Marissa Goodman:
Yeah, absolutely. We do have a few questions in here and I think, you know, it's always great to address like when people think of, you know, franchising just right off the bat, you know, I think most people's heads go to QSR restaurants. But what's one of the most attractive things about to steak is the equipment that's in need it. So can you kind of talk about like grease traps, fryers, grills, things like that.

Brianna Keith:
So what's really great about TOK is that we don't need any of that. We don't have any cooking equipment sometimes, depending on the jurisdiction, we do need some grease traps just because they consider the milk from our espresso fatty and greasy, but no, no hoods, no oven fryers, anything like that. So it really lends ourself going into really great spaces where betting might not be available because we don't need it. Even though we are making everything in house, it's all just freshly chopped or mixed. We obviously have a great Juicer, we have a food processor, we have a cheese melter that, you know, we melt cheeseball so we can roast small amounts of things in there. But it is really, it is really great cause there's not a lot of overhead. It gives us more opportunity in select real estate options and it's a lot easier just to operate. You don't need to hire a cook or chef or anyone that knows how to operate it. You can hire anyone and teach them anything of it.

Marissa Goodman:
What are the top markets? So you're looking to develop in as the focus multi-unit right off the bat or is there opportunity for single units?

Brianna Keith:
Yeah, there's opportunity for both. Even for people who do buy a multi-unit. We do actually put a restriction on how fast they can go from store one, store two, just because we are, we are in the details about everything, quality about every thing, and we totally understand first impressions are everything. So if you try to move to store two too quick when store one's really not solidified and and really as perfect as it can get it, it makes it very challenging. But the biggest benefit with multi-units is the the franchise becomes so much more efficient. They can now share resources. People, you know, have a commissary in one store and deliver juices to the other. So obviously the goal even for people who do buy a single unit, their goal is still to grow more. That's just kind of their their choice to buy one vs three. But I mean ideally in a perfect world, having people like I mentioned before that want to grow with us, that obviously makes the to seats in their community more proven and more solid, more brand energy. But at the same time too, it's helping them become more efficient in their operations. There we go. I almost had myself need it perfect. Another came in here. Investment item seven. The investment range is a little over 370,000 to a little over 846. And really the biggest differentiator in the investment going to be the construction at least hold and and really boils down to where your client is in the country, how big the location is, how much they get in ten improvement allowance from the landlord and and really if it's a cold dark shell or a second genet space, can you kind of talk about that portion of it, what goes into it for a construction?

Brianna Keith:
Yeah, yeah, definitely. That's really where the biggest thing is is the pre-existing space. We have been very fortunate a few times to take over old juice bars where it's very, very minimal. Pretty much the back of house stays the same and we're just putting your finishes on the front, which has is always on the lower end, but of course a cold dark shell when there is no plumbing H back anything. The benefit is you get to design it from scratch exactly how you want, but of course it's way more costly and also depending on the square foots, like Mercia said, which is why we really try to keep it smaller, especially for the first one. You know, the name of the game for the first one is recoup your investment as fast as possible. You have those funds to go on to store number two, and that's where you can go a little bit bigger and that's where you can have your commissary. But store number one, we really like to keep it in our sweet spot to really cut costs on on store one so that those profits can final The Store two.

Marissa Goodman:
Sure, what are the averages required to manage the location? So can you kind of talk about what the owner-operator, you know, operations looks like in the hands-on.

Brianna Keith:
Yeah, in the beginning, 60 or 70 hours a week, just training your team being there, there's going to be hiccups with any new business, there's going to be low hiccups while you're training, but being there to acknowledge it and make it right for the customer, customer leaves. But we do realize it's a lot to learn, nothing's difficult, it's just a lot to learn. So something new that we started in 2024 is we required to at least two people to come for the full corporate training, which is four weeks and it can be split up two weeks and two weeks, three weeks in one week. But having that second person there has been able to ramp up the the opening process so much quicker, so much smoother. You can really divide and conquer to set a hands and eyes on training and inventory and things like that. So that can, that can easily be shortened when you have that second partner involved. And we do encourage more if you have a third person that's going to be full-time in The Store, the more the merrier that everyone comes and learns everything. It's going to make that that time commitment just shorter and not dragged out as long.

Marissa Goodman:
Absolutely. Do you still offer the option of serving alcohol beverages?

Brianna Keith:
We do, We do. Yeah, it's not man. We probably have maybe ten or less stores. Some have a full liquor license, some have a beer and wine license, but it's totally optional because sometimes like, I know, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, it's almost impossible. It's like a $100,000 to get, it's just not worth it. But when it's, you know, cheaper and it's kind of like a bonus, it does great, but the brand works perfectly fine without it.

Marissa Goodman:
So looking ahead, what is your vision for TOI for the next three to five years there? New product lines? Can you maybe talk about our partnerships with like the, the goals for coffee and maybe for marketing and what else are you going to, You know, like add on in addition to The Venue that you think you're going to be incredible in the future.

Brianna Keith:
Yeah. For the next three to five years, JA. We actually just had our seven year anniversary from our first store in July, which I don't know how it was that long. I feel like it's it was just yesterday. But really in the next three to five years, it's always staying true to our values and holding brand integrity, finding great partners, great locations and then on top of that, incorporating amazing programs. So our coffee program we file finalized last year with amazing partners continuing to push that their first four stores actually didn't have espresso. So that's something a little bit newer that we just started adding in 2021, but now all of our stores have it and it's such a big part of a brand. So continuing to push that. And also we just partnered with the marketing agency this year, which were super, super excited about their they're young and hungry like us and they're, they're kind of like the one Stop Shop for reopening, doing all the marketing behind the scenes and analysing all the data as well, the grand opening promotion, and then they're going to be the partners post opening as well for any further digital media advertising, anything that you need. And we're, we're really, really excited about that and I think it's just continuing to listen to our franchisees, listen to the customers, we always have seasonal menus with new items and so really just gaining feedback and and data, you know, we can hear the customers, we can hear the franchisees and then we just have to straight data that shows us what's really, really selling and what's not. So that also helps us kind of give insight on what our customers really like. So just continuing to listen and grow and give the people what they want without losing what our core values are.

Marissa Goodman:
Well, it, that's really all the questions that I have and I came through and really appreciate that. So stay tuned. We are going to be doing pretty soon here another weapon our it's going to feature more of the executive team. You'll see a tour of the test location and many, many other things. So stay tuned for that and I really appreciate it. Says there's Oh, another question came in registration states. California, Virginia, Illinois were registered in all states except for North Dakota and Hawaii. So all of them came through and that's all we have that came through on here. But if there are any questions outside of this, please don't hesitate to reach out. You all know me number, phone number, email all that. So I really appreciate you all joining today And thank you Brianna. And yeah, reach out with any questions and we'll see you soon on our next phone.

Brianna Keith:
Thank you, everyone.

Marissa Goodman:
Thank you.