Wings Etc.

Are you looking for the right opportunity to own your own franchise? Do you like sports? Or you enjoy serving others? Are you committed to excellence even if it means hard work? Do you have a net-worth of $500,000.00 or more and liquid capital of $150,000.00 to invest? Then Wings Etc. Restaurant and Pub Franchise maybe right for you. Wings Etc. is a fun, fast paced restaurant concept that offers award winning wings, a full service restaurant menu, a variety of cold beverage options and lots of HD TV tuned to sports programming all within an energetic sports themed environment. The advantages of Wings Etc. franchise opportunity include low startup costs, low break-even requirements, full pre-opening training and support, simple operations, negotiated volume discounts on food, equipment and supplies, ongoing operational support and national quality marketing and advertising. As a Wings Etc. franchisee you will enjoy the benefits of a proven successful business system with the operational and marketing support to help you develop your market and grow your business. You will receive guidance from Wings Etc. executives who have decades of successful restaurant operations and ownership experience. And you will have access to an ever improving suite of tools and methods to improve operations and your bottom-line. Have questions? We thought you would. So we asked Wings Etc. founder Jim Weaver to answer some of the most frequently asked questions about the Wings Etc. franchise opportunity. Spend a few minutes getting to know Jim and see whether a Wings Etc. franchise is right for you. #1) What’s it takes to be a Wings Etc. franchisee? Well people all the time ask me you know it must be fun to own your own bar. Well it’s like anything else, you have to pay your bills, you have to keep track of your inventory. And in a cash business like a restaurant that means there is other people that are handling your money that you need to keep an eye on. If you are not prepared to work, I mean roll up your sleeves and work and not just sit at the end of the bar and glad hand with your customers then you are probably going to have a real tough time in this business. Most people aren’t willing to give up weekends and evenings, kids ball games and it’s really what you have to do at least in the beginning. The upside is that at the end of the day the money in the till is yours, you have proven something at least to yourself and to be self-employed is really I guess the American dream. #2) What did you do before starting Wings Etc.? Well I was in public accounting and had come to a point in my life where I felt it was time to make a change. And people wonder how you go from public accounting to cooking chicken wings but the opportunity came along in 1994 and I left my current employment and went into the wings business. Running your own company is different than working for somebody else obviously, but managing not only food purchases and employees and payroll and cooking food and anything else that needed to be done on any given day, really was quite a change from the world of a 3 piece suite and an 8 to 5 job. #3) At what point did you realize you could grow Wings Etc.? The Mishawaka location in 1994 was just an overwhelming success. And although it took 4 years we needed a second location. Too many customers were coming and saying we need one the south side of the town, we need on in Elkhart. People asking about hey can I buy in, you got a pretty good thing going here. #4) How are things easier for new franchisees today? In the early days pretty much everything was in my head and all I did was trained the staff and there was a lot of trial and error. Now everything is much more formalized, documented, we are more prepared to train people, we are more prepared to make it happen on a day-to-day basis. Franchisees need help in almost every area, from opening support to advertising, marketing, certainly training, computer training for the help, cooks especially need a lot of guidance in getting the product out the window in a timely fashion that’s all part of it. #5) What’s the thinking behind Wing Etc.’s style of advertising? Well I was driving in my car one day and I was listening to advertisements and they also sounded alike, they all had radio voice people behind them and they were all upbeat, but the message was getting lost. And I contacted an agency and I really gave them pretty reign to be a little humorous, to be a little off the wall, to be a little edgy (commercial) if they needed to be to get the point across of who we really are. (Commercial) And all of our advertising and marketing is designed to remind to remind people about what matters most to us, offering good food and cold beer in a fun, relaxed atmosphere. #6) What role does community outreach play in a Wings Etc. franchise? We do a lot of donations for causes and we try to support everything that we can. Whether it’s Little League, whether it’s for the less fortunate children, we do pretty much as much as we can to get our name out there. We sponsor teams, sports teams it’s all about giving back to the community that is supporting you. #7) What advice would you give to a potential Wings Etc. franchisee? In 1994 when we opened our first location in Mishawaka we weren’t even thinking about being a franchise company. Our goal was to open a place where people could get a great basket of wings, a cold beer and a good seat to watch the game, it was really that simple. I would ask anyone who is considering a Wings Etc. franchise to visit our stores, try our food, talk to our customers and get a feel for who we are.