CEO Martin Sprock: What’s Next for Raving Brands?

With Moe’s under new ownership, CEO Martin Sprock plans to grow and tweak Raving Brands’ diverse array of concepts.

By Maya Norris, Managing Editor -- Chain Leader, 10/4/2007

The sale of 360-unit Moe’s Southwest Grill to Focus Brands in August has lightened Raving Brands’ load, giving Chairman and CEO Martin Sprock more time to focus on the other concepts in the Raving Brands’ portfolio: Planet Smoothie, Shane’s Rib Shack, Doc Green’s Gourmet Salads, Boneheads Grilled Fish and Piri Piri Chicken, PJ’s Coffee of New Orleans, Mama Fu’s Asian House, Monkey Joe’s and The Flying Biscuit Cafe. Sprock recently talked to Chain Leader about what the future holds for these concepts and acquisitions the Atlanta-based company is considering.

Why sell Moe’s, Raving Brand’s flagship concept?

It’s our largest concept, and we filled it out more completely than our other eight concepts.

The bottom line is that we have a lot of partners that have been in this thing for about 10 years with my brand, some of them even 12 years. We’ve worked very hard for very lean salaries. And some of the senior guys, even though they’re not very old, wanted to take some money off the table because anything in life is always uncertain, and they wanted to have a little security blanket.

And they recognize that there’s a lot of things that the buyer could do that we can’t with great real-estate possibilities for some of the [franchisees] and just more money behind them.

Now what are the growth vehicles in the Raving Brands portfolio?

Shane’s Rib Shack is doing incredibly well. That’s our fastest growing brand right now. The franchisees are just having a field day. Most of the groups that are doing a good job in operations are growing and buying more stores. So we will have 100 stores here before we blink. We think it has a big future nationally.

Doc Green’s is not one of our growers. We’re trying to get more dinner business. So we’re going to come in with new items and get more folks feeling like that’s a great dinner option. We have great meats and sides with great salads and sandwiches. It’s a neat atmosphere. We’ll build the dinner business and the catering business and then make that brand really work.

Boneheads has been super exciting. Nobody has a seafood and roasted chicken place like we do. We’ve opened in California, and the guys are just scrambling to build more stores. We had a lot of folks that we had to turn down because that’s a very special brand. It’s not just serving up ice cream cones or something. It’s really great grill cooking, and we want it to be just right. So we’re going to be very careful in how we expand that brand.

We’ve been working [on Flying Biscuit] with our founder Delia [Champion]. She’s just been wonderful to let us get that brand in our hands and let us change a few things, while she’s been iron clad about keeping [most elements of the] brand the way it is. It has a cult following. There’s incredible growth sales out of those stores. We have incredible lunch and breakfast business as you would think as a breakfast house, but it has also been incredible for dinner. That’s one of our favorite brands going into the future.

Monkey Joe’s is outside our original core competency. We don’t serve as much food. We’re in the [kid’s] entertainment business, but it’s not a big stretch for us at all. They’re low-revenue stores than most of the restaurants, and it does take a lot of extra effort when you’re supporting those franchisees. A lot of them don’t have as much capital in that structure, so we have to spend a lot more time helping them with marketing and some other things. It’s a hard place to get the right real estate. It takes a lot of attention to work on that brand, but we’re very excited, and we’re rolling forward with that one.

When you spoke to Chain Leader last year, you said Planet Smoothie, Mama Fu’s and PJ’s were the “tough brands.” What are you doing to make them more profitable?

PJ’s was extremely tough because it was coming off the heels of Katrina. We stuck it out. We’ve worked on redesign. We’ve worked on increasing the store volume through other items. We’ve done a ton of work on that brand and in the coffee packaging and the supply chain--everything we could do to try to better those guys’ chances to succeed.

Planet Smoothie has just been absolutely on a roll. We’ve inserted [Nestle Toll House Cafe in some Planet Smoothies] and made a pact with those guys to do a lot of the stores in test markets. Those have gone very well. And we have also added sandwiches and some salads and turned it more into a cafe. So we’ve worked on that brand humongously, and it’s paid off large.

At Mama Fu’s we have tried some more express items and sampled sushi. We haven’t really increased the sales overall with the exception of the folks that are absolutely living and breathing it. That is a brand that you really have to pay attention to. It’s an art. You have to cook it really well. So it’s not been a hugely successful brand in terms of growth, but we love the brand. And it’s performing better and better for the guys that are staying in it longer and really dedicated to it. As long as there is a big group of guys dedicated to it and doing well with it, we’ll continue to support them as we do everyone.

Are there specific concepts or segments that you are interested in for Raving Brands?

We’re not just a food company. We focus on models that we think will be the best and the most advantageous and also take advantage of our services that we’ve gotten good at. We’re pretty good at real estate. We’re pretty good at purchasing. We’re pretty good at support. We’re pretty good at construction. And we’re getting better at marketing. And so the bottom line is [we will consider] any business that depends on those things. It could be more retail related. It could be wine shops. It could be flip-flop companies. It could be pizza chains. We have a lot of people in those areas that have come to us in the last month.

Do you plan on creating more concepts or will it be more acquisitions from this point on?

We have a lot of capital now, and we have a lot more folks that want to get into business with us. We’re getting phone calls everyday from venture-capital groups and investment-banking groups that want to put money into our companies.

We’ll have more opportunities to take a look at stronger brands, and we’ll have the capital to acquire those. We’ll probably lean more toward acquiring companies than we probably will in developing them. But we have plenty of ideas and plenty of guys that have a lot of experience developing brands and have a lot of success with that. So we’ll look at it both ways.

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