STORES Magazine - September 2008 - (Page 74)

NUTS AND BOLTS / SITE SELECTION rant. When we go to a place, obviously, we want to be successful with our restaurant and we try to find the best locations for us. It may not be the most expensive place or the most desirable site for some chains, but we want to go to where our customers are most concentrated.” Keyes says TaMolly’s offers a unique, family-friendly restaurant model – thus the need to build “fresh” instead of converting existing structures. “Everything is prepared on site,” he says. “A lot of restaurants have commissaries and buy package goods that are bagged and frozen. But we need a lot of prep space. Most restaurant kitchens are not designed for that. It works better for us to build and have control over the design and size of our kitchens.” For TaMolly’s, locating a commu“We want to go nity and a site to where we are known support a new loand where we have cation is an elaboTaMolly’s relies on freshly-diced data when much more similar rate undertaking, customers.” choosing new markets based on strategic – Night Keyes, TaMolly’s site selection and customer analysis, BY M.V. GREENE Keyes says. The privately-held chain, aMolly’s, a small but growth-focused Tex-Mex restaurant chain operating in Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana, puts a premium on freshfounded two decades ago and sold to ness – for both its food and its restaurant locations. new owners in 2005, is intent on adding three to five stores a year. Immediate expansion plans center on “We start from scratch every day and use the highestits familiar locales, as quality ingredients and the freshest available produce and well as Oklahoma. offer them to you at the lowest possible price,” the To better focus its chain proclaims on its website. When seeking out new locations in the secondary markets in which it competes, the Texarkana, Texas-based chain seeks a similar level of freshness as it builds its stores from scratch. But developing a restaurant from the ground up in new markets can be a problematic venture if all the pieces of the puzzle — site selection, direct real estate investment, attracting new customers — don’t fit. “We build to own,” says Night Keyes, TaMolly’s general counsel. “We actually are making an investment in real estate, not just a restau- Built to Order T 74 STORES / SEPTEMBER 2008 WWW.STORES.ORG http://WWW.STORES.ORG

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of STORES Magazine - September 2008

STORES Magazine - September 2008 Contents Executive Editor's Page President's Page Office Depot Unveils First Green Store Dunkin’ Donuts Debuts DDSMART What Shoppers Think 10 Things You May Have Missed Numbers Worth Counting Full Price/Markdown Retail People Are You a Facebook Fan? RFID Concept2Watch E-commerce Supply Chain Marketing ERP Credit Web Optimization LP Vantage Point Newsbeat Cover Story LP Program Building Biometrics Industry Perspective Customer Service Site Selection E-Commerce LOEB Retail Letter Arts Update Point of View NRF News Retail Crossword Retail Industry Calendar Last Laugh

STORES Magazine - September 2008

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