Business View Magazine - August 2016 69
in the IFA – the International Franchise Association.
“That has been a huge help to our business,” says
Jones. “The people that we have met at the IFA con-
vention have been absolutely transparent about their
businesses and have allowed us to glean crucial infor-
mation on management and overall franchise strategy
that’s important to our franchise partners and the rest
of our team. It’s been absolutely fantastic getting all
of these resources available through the IFA to help us
push our business along. We’ve been very thankful for
the partnerships, friendships, and relationships we’ve
been able to establish.”
Finally, Krider says that Ben’s also has a new relation-
ship with the South Bend Chocolate Factory, the fast-
est growing chocolate company in the country. “We’ve
been friends with the owner since we started doing
pretzels at Notre Dame,” he says. “They have recently
become a franchisee in downtown South Bend. We’re
also working on a co-branded project in Indianapolis
that would be a café that would carry their coffee and
beverages and a pretzel bakery, as well. That is sched-
uled to open in mid-June in a Meijer location.”
All in all, it’s been a busy and productive year at Ben’s
Soft Pretzels. We’re looking forward to catching up with
the team again, sometime soon. In the meanwhile, as
the folks at Ben’s are fond of saying: “Have a pretzel
day!”
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