In addition to supplying great coffee and quality food, Biggby strives to ensure all customers leave in a better mood than when they came in.

Bob Fish, founder and CEO of Biggby Coffee, visits his company’s stores quite frequently – just check @BiggbyBob on Twitter to see what drink he’s enjoying at the moment – but every Thursday he takes time out for a bit of customer appreciation and interaction.

“Every Thursday, between 8 and 10 in the morning, I go to a store and buy drinks for everyone who comes in,” he says. “I don’t announce what store I’ll be at – I just show up, buy drinks and talk to the customers and employees. It’s really fun, and it allows me to talk to everyone face to face. It’s part of what I love about this business.”

A fun atmosphere and friendly interaction are two elements of Biggby Coffee that have enabled the brand to consistently grow since its inception almost 15 years ago, but a dedication to providing “great coffee” has helped, as well. Recently, Food and Drink spoke to Fish about the Biggby Coffee brand, how it is growing and what will make it the No. 1 business of its kind.

Food and Drink: How did Biggby Coffee get started?
Bob Fish: We opened the first location in March 1995 in East Lansing, Mich. At that time, there were 35 coffee shops in the town. I was from the foodservice industry – I owned a breakfast restaurant for many years, but I sold it in 1993. I began traveling throughout the United States to get ideas for what I would do next. I got to Seattle and became enamored with the city and their specialty coffee industry, and realized I wanted to run my own coffee shop.

We opened the first location in an old Arby’s restaurant. The space had been abandoned for a long time and it was in bad shape, but we put in a lot of work and built a café out of it. One of the impetuses behind my desire for this business was that it was much simpler than the breakfast restaurant. Also, I had lived in Europe for 12 years and developed a strong passion for coffee. When I came back to the United States, I thought my days of enjoying gourmet coffee were over. At that time, the specialty coffee industry was very stuffy, but we wanted to make it approachable and engaging.

FAD: How is Biggby unique?
BF: Our menu is similar to other coffee shops in terms of what we offer, but we only use high-quality ingredients. We want our food and drinks to be the best. Also, we focus on being unintimidating. We give our drinks fun names, and we work hard to be a place people want to come to because of the engagement of our staff. Our goal is that every customer must leave in a better mood than when they came in. At every location, we want to make friends, love our customers, have fun, be happy and make great coffee. Our focus is simple – we want to be highly engaged with our customers and sell great coffee.

FAD: How do you maintain this atmosphere at all your locations?
BF: Training is very important to us. We have a full-blown café at our corporate office that serves as our training and testing center. We are a 100-percent franchised system, so each franchisee spends six weeks at the corporate office in training, and then has 180 hours of training onsite before their location is open. We also have our “Perkolator” training. Every store has to have a Perkolator – someone who is not the manager. Our Perkolators provide the initial barista training and the manager-in-training training.

FAD: Why did you decide to expand by franchising?
BF: There are not many franchises in the coffee industry, and we knew we could help our franchise owners survive and compete in their markets. We are completely franchised – we put independent business owners in business for themselves in their own café, and we help them because we know exactly what it takes to make their business happen.

It is very difficult for people to be profitable in the coffee industry, but we know what to do. Right now, our leading competitor is down 8 to 9 percent in same-store sales, but we are not. We continue to grow in a down economy and that is saying something. Most of our locations are in Michigan, which is the state with the worst economy other than California. We have about 109 franchises right now, but we don’t advertise to attract new franchise owners. Even so, our number of franchises has doubled about every two years.

FAD: Is there a certain type of person that makes a good Biggby franchisee?
BF: Our franchisees have to go through an extensive process to qualify and have to be financially capable – it’s a $300,000 investment. Also, they need to have a strong work ethic and a dynamic personality. They should be very outgoing so they can be highly engaged with their customers.
Operators are required to work in the store when they own their first store, and that eliminates a lot of people. We want these businesses to succeed, so we want owner/operators. Fundamentally, you can’t really run a business well until you understand it, and you can’t understand it unless you do it yourself.

Also, if you’re not committed to being part of the foodservice industry, you won’t do well. Our owners have to cover all areas of running a business – manufacturing, marketing, service, accounting, to name a few. It’s hard work, and we can’t teach them how to work hard. We’ve found that really successful franchises are operated by their owners, at least at the start.

FAD: How do you support franchisees?
BF: We have a marketing department that is fully engaged to help each location. They will produce anything for any operator at any time, and have it to them within two days. They are a big part of helping owners customize marketing and advertising plans to their local markets.

In terms of operations, we provide them with extensive financial tools and someone from corporate checks in with them at least once a week. Transparent communication is very important to us. We have an online Franchise Resource Center with an extensive amount of tools for our owners – like the marketing and operational schedules and seasonal programs. It contains each operator’s financial data, and it allows them to see their numbers in a variety of ways. They can compare today’s sales to the same day last year or see the metrics of the system as a whole. The resource center also has a place where operators can post questions, and anyone can answer – someone from corporate or another franchisee.

At the corporate office, we survey an average of one in 10 customers every 30 days. We also do our own operational inspections and have third-party secret shoppers. We take the information from these three sources and create a service index for each operator, which helps them know how to improve.

We send mass media campaigns to each operator from the corporate office, and we customize the campaigns for each store’s local market. Additionally, we send coupons to each customer via e-mail, and on their birthday, we send each customer an actual birthday card through the regular mail.

FAD: Have you made any changes to the Biggby Coffee menu recently?
BF: We just launched our new E-Drink, which is a coffee drink with an energy supplement full of vitamins. We’re also putting a big emphasis on food right now. When the economy was really strong, we were seeing desserts climb in size – they were becoming overindulgent. Now, however, consumers are more conscious of indulgence – they want smaller sizes and lower prices. The same thing is happening in the overall dining industry. People are also moving away from Twinkie-type ingredients – a lot of chemicals and mysterious ingredients. They want whole ingredients that they know, and our menu items have been focused on that type of quality for years.

The economy may be down right now, but people can still indulge in a coffee shop and be comfortable doing so. Customers are conscious of what they’re spending, but they’re not cutting their coffee out entirely. People aren’t willing to give up everything – they want to be able to take a moment to enjoy the little things.

FAD: What are Biggby’s growth plans?
BF: We will continue to grow in concentric rings from where we started in East Lansing. We want to build near the last store we opened, but we are reaching out into other states. We will push out from the center, but stay connected for distribution and marketing.  

FAD: What is your vision for the company?
BF: World domination – we want to have continued growth and to be the No. 1 franchise coffee system in the United States. Our growth rate is about 50 percent annually, and that will continue to be manageable with our franchise system. We want to create one new Biggby Coffee fanatic each day at each store, and we can do that by being intentionally unintimidating and purposeful. Our stores are fun and have great products, which is why people keep coming in, even in a down economy.