Spring is time to inventory your life for happiness

It’s spring, the beginning of a season; longer and warmer days, and lively colors from ground cover to clothing. It’s also the end of a very interesting first quarter. I describe it as attention-getting but you may label it with your own adjective. Needless to say, some moments not only allow for reflection but will stand up and point at that reflecting pool that’s filled with the big questions – Am I happy? – Are my family and I secure? – Am I where I wanted to be at this stage of my life? You know, the big questions.

On occasions such as these, it is uplifting to consider a new you. A new you for your family, for your community, and most importantly, for you. I can help in a few ways but mainly my expertise rests in my portfolio of businesses and 25+ years of nonprofit experience. Either one will help build community but for the sake of argument, let’s stick to the portfolio today.

Is there such a thing as healthy eating – really?

We’ve been exploring a lot of healthy things to do with oneself over the past couple of months, regarding franchise ownership. One industry that has been booming for over two decades and growing ever stronger, year after year is the fast-casual/healthy food market. This segment sits at the height of the fast-casual food-trend and has shown over 500% growth in the United States.

In today’s fast-casual market, to be appealing it must be several things, starting with TASTY. It has to offer a variety of healthy flavorful selections of quality product, as well as low-cost; the rest is location. For the owner of a fast-casual franchise restaurant, it needs to be a solid model with proven success. It should fill a niche in your market area and if possible, able to be run semi-absentee. You’d want to keep the total cost under $300,000, with an average return of $200,000+; am I right?

If all this sounds interesting, I have one word for you…poké.

Poké (POH-kay) IS the next big thing in food. Poké is a Hawaiian raw-food specialty that hit the mainland U.S. like a tidal wave and has swept from coast to coast over the last six years. Heavily influenced by Japanese and other Asian cuisines, it’s a mix of traditional diced raw yellow tuna, salmon, and shellfish, along with unique and newer ingredients including avocado, ponzu sauce, teriyaki sauce, mushrooms, crispy onions, pickled jalapeño, sriracha sauce, cilantro, pineapple or cucumber. Other ingredients include wasabi, fresh chili peppers, seaweed, and soy sauce. Poké topped America’s trending food list for favorite eats, for four years running.

One thing that got my attention is food on a stick.  Healthy food on a stick! What’s the best way to get your little ones to eat healthily? Put it all on a stick!!  In all seriousness, though, doesn’t this look delightful? Look again up above – you did see the words “low cost” too. Is this sounding too good to be true? Think again!

Business Insider says, “poké is a deconstructed, flavorful version of sushi. It’s also generally healthy and endlessly customizable.” Bloomberg’s article, How Hawaiian Street Food Took Over Takeout says poké is, much more economical compared to a traditional restaurant, which requires industrial-strength cooking equipment and a venting system.

No need to be intimidated

Because it’s a franchise, you need no experience or in fact, need to know anything about this business to be successful. This is a turn-key operation with corporate management serving as a hand-hold, walking you through the procedure of becoming a franchisee and opening your restaurant. As we all know, it’s all about location, their management is going to help you find your location. They are going to help you with lease negotiation and leasehold improvements and with this model, the average number of employees needed is two.

This is an extremely versatile model and can be operated out of a 500 – 700 sq. ft. food court space for around $150k, all the way up to a 1400+ sq. ft. restaurant, for a little over $200k. The buildout is almost a shop-in-a-box, with an average start to finish of 120 -140 days to a turn-key Grand Opening.

This is a highly affordable business with low startup costs and an extremely high-profit margin. In fact, per quarter, their stores average 30-40% net profit, which is almost unheard of in the entire industry.

What do you think…can you see yourself here? Let’s talk and I’ll fill you in!