Small Business Stories - First Watch

Alex Fees: I’m Alex Fees on SBTV.com here at the IFA Conference in Orlando, Florida that’s the International Franchise Association and joining me here now is Chris Tomaso. Chris Tomaso: How Are you doing? Alex Fees: Am I doing your name— Chris Tomaso: Yeah, actually just right. Alex Fees: Chris is a Chief Marketing Officer for First Watch restaurants. Correct? Chris Tomaso: Correct. Alex Fees: Now, you guys have an exciting initiative that you’re actually announcing here at IFA. Chris Tomaso: We are using this conference as a springboard to announce that we’ll be offering franchise opportunities within our company to franchise First Watch restaurants around the country. Alex Fees: Is this brand new? Something you’ve not done before? Chris Tomaso: That’s correct. We’ve grown over the past twenty five years through company on locations and now we are ready to go to the next stage which is franchising. Alex Fees: How does the corporation go about making that decision to franchise? Chris Tomaso: Yeah, it’s one that we’ve taken our time making that decision on it. I think for good reason, franchising becomes a whole new world for your organization. It can mean rapid growth, but it also means that you really have to pay attention to your operations, your procedures, your policies and those type of things to make sure that what’s gotten you to where you are to be able to franchise is what can take you in to the next step. So you list a little bit of control or at least feel like you do, so it’s really important that you’re fully prepared and that you’ve got some locked and loaded systems and policies and procedures to take you there. Alex Fees: Why did first watch choose to make an announcement at IFA? Chris Tomaso: It’s a perfect place. I mean the IFA Conference is where everybody on all sides of the business from franchise is to franchise ors to service providers are here and the timing just worked out perfectly. Of course, we’ve been working on this for close to a year. Getting all of our necessary legal documents and everything in place and it lined up perfectly so we decided to become members and come here and use it as a place for announcement. Alex Fees: Now, First Watch’s tag line is, what is it? Chris Tomaso: The Daytime Café. Alex Fees: It kind of a tag line about nights off? Chris Tomaso: Yeah. It’s a great business motto for us for our employees when you ask our employees what they like about working at First Watch, it really is a quality life issue and it’s wonderful opportunity for managers and our least to be home by four o’clock in the afternoon everyday and for a manager stamp or to a service stamp point make the same kind of money you could if your are working at a casual diner work until three or four in the morning in some cases so yeah. Alex Fees: Well Chris when it comes to First Watch, what do you believe set you apart from your competition? Chris Tomaso: You know, First Watch again we’ve been around for almost twenty five years now and we spend a lot of time refining our menu items and those type of things and you know what, it’s a lot of basic things and it’ll sound really easy but we really do focus on the customer and we focus on the food and everything else is kind of on the periphery of that and we make it a point to train all of our employees to really make sure they take care of the customer first. That’s first and foremost what they there to do. Alex Fees: All right. Good deal. Chris, I appreciate you being here. Chris Tomaso: All right. Thank you. Alex Fees: Again, he is Chris Tomaso. He is the Chief Marketing Officer for First Watch Restaurants making a major announcement here at IFA. Chris Tomaso: Thanks for having me. Alex Fees: Appreciate you being here. Chris Tomaso: All right.