Business View - August 2015 109
FRANCHISE
went to close, they found out that they weren’t getting
the recipe. So they had to develop their own recipe to
make the business work.
“They spent a lot of grueling hours, lots of sampling,
and many, many different batches to come up with the
recipe that we enjoy, today. They had a second loca-
tion in a farmers’ market in Shipshewana, Indiana,
and that’s where I discovered them. Ben and I became
friends. He introduced me to all of his bakery items,
and then, eventually, to the pretzel, which I thought
was just out-of-this-world good. I shared that with my
business partner, Brian Krider. Once he tried the prod-
uct and fell in love, we both knew that it was really
something special.
“We started wholesaling Ben’s bakery items, including
the pretzel. We were selling to just a couple of places
as a lunchtime item for them. That went on for a cou-
ple of years – just selling product here and there and
eventually Brian had this epiphany one day and said,
‘We should just start a pretzel business around this
pretzel.’ So, we wrote a business plan in ’07, focused
around a company called Ben’s Soft Pretzels. It was
going to be kind of a brick and mortar, mall-type loca-
tion, a fresh-baked bakery. We didn’t know very much
at the beginning. We figured we’d get into this and
learn a lot about it as we go. We added a franchising
component to the business plan and said that when
we get to a certain point we’re going to start franchis-
ing, because we know this product is that good.”
The partners opened their first store in Elkhart, in
May 2008. Their all-cash investment paid them back
within the first year. That success led to opening up
store number two within 18 months of the first one;
