Barbados for my money but I don’t think people mean that when they ask that question of Great Harvest.
The real answer is that there isn’t just one perfect location. And part of what we get paid to do is to find the best location for you to open your bread store. Getting the location right (which is different from perfect) is critical to a bread store’s success.
If you are considering opening a retail business, I would guess that you are either stressing over where to locate it or have convinced yourself you already "know" of the perfect location. I can say with complete confidence that both approaches can benefit from an outside perspective. Many companies do site selection by the numbers. Some do it by psychographic feel. We do a combination of the two.
Exactly how we choose a location is a trade secret, as it is for every company, but we do it well. As I look around the country I can say with complete honesty that we don’t have a bad location in our system. Some are better than others but none are bad. That isn’t coincidence.
We are very methodical in our process and we follow it for each and every new store. What is right? It is the combination of cost, looks, ease of use and neighbors. We balance all of that for you and also take into account your vision. What does right look like to you? As a business owner, you have to be proud of what you have. We take that seriously but we also trust our experience and knowledge. We have certain looks we like and your neighbors make a difference. Size, shape and condition influence cost. Parking, ingress/egress, age, demographics...all of these things matter and we take each and every one of them into account.
At the end of the day, when people worry about site selection while thinking about buying a franchise, I give a very simple answer. In my 11 years of doing this at Great Harvest we have had exactly zero people not find a location when they tried. Three people I can think of got cold feet and didn’t really look but every other person we have worked with found a successful location. That record speaks for itself.
Now, I am off to Barbados.
Want to learn more about the Great Harvest approach to location hunting? Listen to an audio interview with Mike Ferretti here:
