Business View - December 2015 93
Today, there are approximately 1,000 PYOP businesses in
America, but Color Me Mine is the only multi-state chain
with 150 stores. The brand controls about 15 percent of
the market in store count, but takes in about 30 percent
of total revenue because its stores do more than twice the
volume of its independent, non-branded competitors. But
perfecting the Color Me Mine’s successful business mod-
el was something that Mooslin still had to figure out after
his company, Koo Koo Roo Restaurants, bought Color Me
Mine from Robin and Josh in 1994.
Koo Koo Roo began building stores, in some cases as an
adjunct to one of its restaurants, and in others, as stand-
alone entities. “They opened fine,” Mooslin remembers,
“and then we started watching the sales go down. We
couldn’t figure it out. Everything we assumed about it was
wrong. We didn’t understand what we bought.” Around the
same time, Koo Koo Roo was planning to sell itself to an-
other restaurant chain - one that didn’t want to take on the
Color Me Mine part of the business. Mooslin was tasked
with getting rid of it the company some other way.
So he began to investigate why the stores weren’t clicking
and what he came to realize was that this “perfect small
franchise” was one that needed the intimate, community
involvement of an owner. “It didn’t work in mixed use ar-
eas; it didn’t work in discount areas; it didn’t work in big-
box centers,” he explains. “It worked in suburbs; it worked
in communities where there were families.” So Mooslin
FRANCHISE
