
- Create a system and operation that franchisees could easily reproduce.
- Centralize its manufacturing facilities. In 1996, Golden Krust opened a 60,000-square-foot plant in the Bronx, funded by $1.2 million in loans backed by New York City. Information on NYC incentives.
- Make all its stores, both company- and franchisee-owned, uniform in design and look.
- Change its stores from bakeries into restaurants by offering freshly cooked Caribbean take-out meals in addition to its baked products.
- You have got an instant market that’s familiar with your product.
- You understand the market’s tastes, buying triggers and culture.
- No competition from large-scale American producers, who typically focus on the mainstream market and see fragmented ethnic markets as too small.
- Opportunities to expand outside of your own ethnic market by selling to the “mainstream” American market or creating a brand-new product by “Americanizing” the original.
- Produce high-quality, competitively priced products.
- Sell directly to their customers—many Caribbean bakeries in New York sold to third-party wholesalers.
- Invest in designing and building a uniform look for their stores that was inviting and customer-friendly.
- Laser-focus their sales efforts by positioning their bakeries and stores in neighborhoods where large numbers of their best prospects—fellow Jamaican immigrants—lived and worked.