January 2017 | Business View Magazine

44 45 COFFEE NEWS Winnipeg, Manitoba. The story goes that while Daum was placing a lunch order at her favorite café one day, she found herself reading the nu- tritional information on a sugar packet to pass the time before her food arrived. The thought occurred to her that restaurant patrons would be prime users of something–anything- that was available and quick to read while they, too,waited for service. So, she started Coffee News. Initially, Daum did all of the new publica- tion’s writing, ad sales, layout, and formatting, her- self, for 13 separate editions that she hand-dis- tributed throughout the city of Winnipeg. Daum’s publication took off with a response that exceeded her wildest dreams. People wanted to read Coffee News, restaurants wanted to carry it, and local businesses wanted to advertise in it. She began fran- chising the operation in Cana- da, and in 1995, Bill Buckley of Bangor, Maine, a retail banking executive with no newspaper experience, whatsoever, bought the rights to publish and dis- tribute Coffee News in his local community, af- ter discovering a copy in nearby New Brunswick. AT A GLANCE coffee news WHAT: The world’s #1 restaurant publication WHERE: World headquarters in Bangor, Maine WEBSITE: www.coffeenews.com Like Daum’s experience in Winnipeg, Buckley quickly discovered that restaurants were more than willing to carry the paper in their estab- lishments. He bought several more franchises to serve the greater Bangor area, and Daum soon offered him the rights to sell all franchises throughout the United States. “I sold 20 fran- chises the first year,” he recounts. “At the end of the second year, I was up to 40. At the end of the third year, I was up to 80 franchises. By the end of the next year, I was up to 160, then I was up to 320, and it just kept growing.” Daum and Buckley eventually became part- ners in the business, and when Daum died in 2007, Buckley became the owner and franchisor of not just the U.S. market, but all the Canadian and worldwide franchises, as well. Today, be- cause of the vision of Jean Daum and the en- trepreneurial dynamism of Bill Buckley, Coffee News is the world’s largest franchise publica- tion, as well as the world’s largest restaurant publication. With approximately 800 franchises in over 15 countries worldwide, and head of- fices in New Zealand, Australia, Spain, Cana- da, South Africa, Portugal, Panama, Honduras, Austria, Bahrain, and Venezuela. A few months ago, Business View Magazine caught up with Buckley to see what has trans- pired since our initial conversation with him in late 2015. The latest news update is Coffee