Profiles in Growth: Huddle House

-- Chain Leader, 6/1/2008

Brent Dixon’s venture into multiunit franchising began with a television commercial. Last year, his father saw an ad for Huddle House, a 24-hour Southeastern concept serving cooked-to-order comfort food. It struck a chord.

“Huddle House is what we need in this area,” says Dixon, who is based in Collinwood, Tenn. “You can get anything from steak to eggs, the food quality is upper grade, and it’s open 24 hours. Most other places here close at midnight.”

With a third partner, Dixon and his father signed a market-development agreement with Huddle House in April 2007, using their 18 years of experience running two independent steakhouses to leverage a loan to launch the new venture.

Here are his thoughts on development.

Q: How will you expand?

A: Our area is from Manchester, Tenn., all the way through the southern part into Jackson, Tenn. We have two units currently, in Lewisburg and Manchester, and are about to start construction on a third in Savannah. We signed a deal to build nine units in five years.

Q: How have you adjusted your approach for Huddle House vs. your steakhouses?

A: Huddle House has an open kitchen and smaller seats, and you’re dealing with fewer guests, so you need to operate it more on a personal level. The stores that do well in the system have managers who develop one-on-one relationships with their customers, on a first-name basis. It takes time, and the right manager.

Q: How do you plan to improve?

A: Keep looking for that quality management as we build our management team. We have a district manager who has worked for us for eight years, and we’re going out and really recruiting now for the Manchester store that we’re fixing to open in two weeks.

Q: What are your goals?

A: Honestly, to us, it’s an investment. What we want to do is
develop a 12- to 14-unit chain, run it and sell it in 10 years or so.

Q: How do you see the landscape for area development?

A: It’s tightening up somewhat. That’s another thing we looked at—what we could do multiple units of in our part of the world here. All other franchises that are doable in our market are pretty much there. Most of our markets wouldn’t support a specialty brand like a Starbucks or Baskin-Robbins.