百大连锁店 Rank no. 167 -新移民致富之路

Top 250 Franchise by Entrepreneur – Rank no. 167 -Great Harvest Franchising Inc. – US

Products & Services: Bread bakery

Number of Locations: 212

Total Investment: $111.88K – 593.67K

Founded: 1976

Began Franchising: 1978

About Great Harvest Franchising Inc.
Pete Wakeman had been baking bread most of his life. As a child, he would help his aunt. In high school, he baked for his friends. During summer vacations, he sold bread from the roadside. In 1976, when Wakeman heard about a bakery in Great Falls, Montana, that was going under, he bought it. With the help of his wife, Laura, Wakeman established the Great Harvest Bread Co. and set about baking loaves for people in the Great Falls community.

Soon, people from neighboring communities started asking about setting up their own Great Harvest locations. The first franchise opened in Kalispell, Montana. In 1983, the Wakemans converted their Great Falls bakery into a franchise and moved company headquarters to Dillon, Montana, so they could concentrate on the franchising end of their business.

Great Harvest bakeries serve a variety of breads each day including honey whole wheat, white cheddar garlic, sunflower and cranberry orange.

Where Seeking Franchisees: Franchisor is seeking new franchise units throughout the U.S.
Startup Costs, Ongoing Fees and Financing
Total Investment: $111,892 – $593,676
Franchise Fee: $38,000
Ongoing Royalty Fee: 4-7%
Term of Franchise Agreement: 10 years, renewable
Financial Requirements
Net Worth: $350,000
Liquid Cash Available: $80,000
Operations
20% of all franchisees own more than one unit. Number of employees needed to run franchised unit: 5 – 7. Absentee ownership of franchise is NOT allowed. (100% of current franchisees are owner/operators).
How This Franchise Supports Franchisees
Training: Available at headquarters: 1 week. At franchisee’s location: 1 week. At existing locations : 2 weeks.
Ongoing Support: Newsletter, Meetings, Toll-free phone line, Grand opening, Internet, Security/safety procedures, Field operations/evaluations, Purchasing cooperatives, Lease Negotiation
Marketing Support: Co-op advertising, Ad slicks, Regional advertising,
Other marketing support: PR campaign during opening, monthly marketing promotions, annual marketing plan
Franchise Ranking History
Franchise 500®: #167 (2013), #166 (2012), #155 (2011), #193 (2010), #290 (2009),
America’s Top Global: #151 (2010),

It all began back in the 1970s. Our founders, Pete and Laura Wakeman, were just a couple of college kids who baked amazing scratch-made whole grain bread to help pay their tuition at Cornell University. Newly married in 1975, the adventurous couple hiked the entire north-south length of Montana. They never left and they established the first Great Harvest Bakery in Great Falls.

Word spread fast about their uniquely flavorful bread made with pure-and-simple ingredients and wheat purchased from local farmers. It didn’t take long before neighbors asked about starting up their own Great Harvest. In 1978, the freedom franchise was born and the next bakery opened in Kalispell, Montana.

Slowly and organically, Great Harvest began to grow into the nation’s first family of independently owned and operated whole grain bread bakeries. Authenticity, a spirit of camaraderie and individuality remain the foundation of the organization. Today there are more than 200 Great Harvest bakeries located across the United States, including Alaska and Hawaii.

In 2001, the Wakemans sold the company to Chairman Nido Qubein, President/CEO Mike Ferretti and a group of partners. Today, Mike and Nido own 100% of the company and Mike is active in the day to day operations. Mike was has always been passionate about preserving the Great Harvest philosophy and strengthening it. With Ferretti at the helm, the first Franchise Agreement Board was formed. This allowed an elected board of bakery owners to approve all future changes to the franchise agreement. Big strides have been made in other areas, too. Now many bakeries across the country offer customers awesome sandwiches and panini, and full-service coffee and espresso bars. The most exciting development is Great Harvest’s new offering of European-style hard-crusted breads, including whole grain varieties, at an increasing number of bakeries.

Mike Ferretti is a regular contributor to our Bread Business Blog. You can subscribe to learn more about him and his vision for Great Harvest.

Vision Statement

When individual bakery owners succeed and grow, the entire Great Harvest franchise family succeeds and grows. To support the success of our owners, we teach and actively model the mission statement of being loose and having fun, giving generously to others, creating strong and exciting bakeries, baking phenomenal bread, and running fast to serve customers. We believe our success comes from a strong commitment to uphold the legacy and integrity of the Great Harvest brand with its focus on the customer experience, and the promise of phenomenal tasting products made with freshly-milled whole grain blended with pure and simple ingredients. In short, we create, share, and teach the tools that bakery owners use to personalize their bakeries and achieve their unique goals within the context of the Great Harvest franchise agreements. Through the collective knowledge we share, and the learning communities we facilitate, Great Harvest Franchising, Inc., remains the envy of the franchise industry.

People

Our goal is to recruit the nicest, most generous, honest and authentic people we can find. We attract candidates who love learning for the plain fun of it, who see business as an adventure and an excuse to play. We introduce them to our learning community, which supports the entrepreneurial spirit and helps them TRULY run their own thing, make their own mistakes, have their own successes, and be 100 percent themselves.

Whole Wheat Bread

We love whole wheat bread. It’s what made us famous and continues to endear us to a broader array of happy customers. That’s because we think whole wheat bread, when it’s made with fresh-ground flour and pure-and-simple ingredients, tastes incredible. There’s just something about the way that nutty, rich taste of wheat combines with honey, yeast and salt that keeps customers coming back.

Freedom Franchise

If you look at most franchises, they began when some smart person figured out a way to make some money by writing down a recipe and inviting others to copy it. The great thing about these sorts of franchises is that they aren’t very risky for the person joining the franchise. The business is, after all, proven.

Most franchises of this variety require their owners to do things their way, with little or no variation. Cookie cutter-style. That’s because the franchisor is trying to build a national brand, the foundation of which is consistency. The problem with this sort of franchise, if you’re an entrepreneur-type, is that they aren’t very much fun. All the good stuff about opening your own business – figuring out what you want to offer and what color the walls will be – aren’t your decisions to make. They’ve already been made.

At the other end of things is starting up and running your own Mom and Pop shop. There you have all the freedom in the world to create this thing just the way you want, but you’re flying solo, with no one else to lean on. That’s why so many start-ups fail.

We provide you with middle ground between the advantages of a traditional franchise and the fun of a let’s-do-it-all-ourselves start-up. Our philosophy is simple. Let’s create unique neighborhood bakeries that are a reflection of the Great Harvest brand and the bakery owner. We are no cookie cutter franchise. We are a freedom-based franchise that encourages excellence and individuality, not to mention a spirit of fun and generosity.

Growth

Do you want to become the world’s next gazillionaire or do you want to have a wonderful quality of life? We expect every bakery to succeed based on the owner’s definition of success. When bakeries grow, it means more people are eating great bread. But we don’t love growth so much that we let it blind us to what we want from life or endanger the thing we’ve already built. To us, there is a balance somewhere between stagnation and chaos. It’s called sustainable growth. That’s what we’re all about.

“Designing a Life”

Owning and running a bakery is about our owners making good lives for themselves and their families. It is not the other way around. Their lives are not somehow in service of this business. That means we expect our bakery owners to keep doing this thing so long as it’s fun and makes their lives fuller. Not a minute longer.

Learning Community

When you open a Great Harvest bakery, there aren’t many rules on how to run your store. Owners of each franchise do it their way, but within the context of a community of like-minded and like-talented and like-spirited owners. By connecting both bakery owners and franchise staff together into a learning community, we all profit from 200+ minds and 30+ years of experience. For example, a great recipe for trail bread invented in Minnesota flies across the system because it is so tasty. A promo tip pioneered by Washington, D.C.-area bakeries is quickly picked up in the Ohio River valley and the Northwest because it produces results. These free-flowing ideas keep us fresh. Bakery owners support the entire system with ideas and feedback. It’s collaboration at its best. And it provides an amazing competitive advantage.

Great Harvest Franchising, Inc.
28 S. Montana Street
Dillon, MT 59725

Phone: 800-442-0424 or 406-683-6842

Fax: 406-683-5537

Source: Great Harvest Franchising, Inc. official website