Bruster's builds on reputation

By Michael Yeomans
Tribune-Review
Wednesday, February 6, 2002

Bruce Reed didn't plan to become czar of a rapidly growing frozen empire when he erected an ice cream stand in 1989 for his sister to operate next to the car-hop restaurant their parents opened in the 1950s.

Yet, 12 years after opening the first Bruster's Ice Cream along the Beaver River in Bridgewater, Reed is scooping out new franchise agreements faster than one of his soda jerks on a steamy Saturday in July.

"I'm not really a person who thinks too far ahead when I start something," Reed said. "With me it's: Ready, aim, fire. And then after I get into something, I start to think about what to do next."

Having built the franchise to 100 locations stretching from New York to Florida, Reed has hired a seasoned frozen dessert industry executive to help map out a new expansion strategy.

Now, he plans to fire up 50 new stores in 2002, and another 75 in 2003.

Jim Sahene, former president and chief operating officer of TCBY Systems Inc., is returning to his boyhood home to lead the expansion. TCBY was sold in June 2000 to Mrs. Fields Original Cookies Inc. of Salt Lake City.

Sahene has numerous family members in the area. He spent his first seven years in Penn Hills before his father, a U.S. Steel executive, was transferred to the Bahamas to help run a cement subsidiary.

"To be back in Pittsburgh and be in the same business I enjoy is a great opportunity," he said.

Sahene had started modestly in store management at Little Rock, Ark.-based TCBY in 1986, but steadily rose in the organization, founded in 1981, to become president and chief operating officer by 1994.

He said he hadn't heard of Bruster's when he got a call from Reed asking him if he would be interested in growing the franchise, but was impressed when he first examined the business.

"Bruce has put together a good team and a good system around a unique concept," he said. "We want to be known as having the highest quality product made fresh on-site daily and with generous servings."

Sahene said his first focus will be on building sales and reducing expenses at the existing units.

Reed, whose business card simply refers to him as "The Bruce in Bruster's," said happy franchisees are his best selling point. "I've never advertised for franchisees."

Reed said he explored buying a TCBY franchise when he first started out, but decided he didn't like the frozen yogurt.

For the previous 20 years, Reed operated Jerry's Curb Service, a drive-in restaurant opened by his parents where waitresses serve customers in their cars with trays hanging on the doors.

Despite the aggressive growth plans, the company retains the old-fashioned family flavor. The company's headquarters is less than a mile from the original store in a converted church which houses the 13 headquarters employees.

Stacy Palas, who recently opened her second Bruster's franchise in Robinson Township, said it was working for Reed in the Wexford Bruster's, the second store to open after the original in Bridgewater, as a college undergraduate that convinced her she wanted to stay a part of the family.

After graduating from college and working a few years in customer service for PNC Bank, she approached Reed about buying a franchise. No opportunities were available at the time when he was only opening two or three stores a year.

"A year later he called and said, 'Do I have a deal for you!'" she said.

A man and wife who had started the ball rolling on a franchise, but decided the work it entailed was more than they bargained for, leased the franchise to Palas, and her husband, Thomas.

" Within three weeks we both quit our jobs and opened our store with a bang," she said.

Continuing on the family theme, Palas' mother and father, both semi-retired, decided to buy a franchise in Erie, the year after she bought hers. Her parents have subsequently also opened a second store.

And Reed's sister, Candy Young, the inspiration for the first store, now operates a franchise across the Ohio border in Calcutta.

The franchises, which cost anywhere from $500,000 to $750,000 to start, depending on land acquisition costs, have grown organically.

Although Bruster's is based in Beaver County and has about 30 stores in western Pennsylvania, about half of the 100 stores are in and around Atlanta, where the chain's prefabricated buildings are made and shipped to their final destination and laid on their foundation.

"We can have a store up and running in seven hours," Reed said.

Reed explains that one of the first franchisees was a group from Atlanta with family from Pittsburgh. After seeing a Bruster's while visiting family, they contacted Reed about opening stores in Georgia.

Reed said the entrepreneurial environment is healthier in Atlanta than it is here, with lenders more apt to take risks, which allowed the franchise to blossom there in a short period.

Nearly two-thirds of all Bruster's stores are owned by franchisees who own more than one store, Reed said.

Palas said she and her husband put in seven-day weeks in their business. He handles most of the ice cream-making duties while she does the books. Her most recent store opened in October inside the Mall at Robinson, the first Bruster's to go in a mall.

"I'm the guinea pig," she said. "But so far it's working out well."

When he isn't managing his business, Reed retreats to his Beaver County farm where he raises cattle.

"He's so down on your level," Palas said. "He is what makes Bruster's. If it wasn't for him I wouldn't be involved."

Michael Yeomans can be reached at myeomans@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7908.