Tag: Franchises

Proposed Developments
01/23/09 9:38am

Burger Chains Ready Attack on Houston: Carl’s Jr., Smashburger, Five Guys

by
Restaurants, Retail
19 Comments

A new company has signed an agreement to open 121 new Carl’s Jr. franchises in Texas — including as many as 40 in the Houston area — over the next 10 years. But it’ll take a while for them to get started here at least. The Houston Business Journal‘s Allison Wollam reports that RWJP Star Enterprises has

a franchise agreement to open locations in the eastern part of Houston, and [partner Rich] White expects the first location to open in the first quarter of next year. They are still in the process of scouting sites, the first of which will be built from the ground up.

Carl’s Jr. franchises have to agree to open at least three units, for a total initial investment of $1.3 million, according to the company’s Web site.

Will the year-long wait leave enough time for other competing newcomers to get established? Wollam reports Smashburger is planning to open a second location at Briarforest and Eldridge later this month. And:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

, , , ,
Openings and Closings
11/21/08 10:53am

Not Just Spring Chicken

by
Quicklink, Restaurants, Spring
1 Comment

NOT JUST SPRING CHICKEN More chain chicken joints are heading this way: “At least 10 area Zaxby’s locations are planned by franchisees Jim Stokes and Matt Monds, with the first slated to open in January in Spring. Monds is a former Chick-fil-A operator who had been looking for a reason to return to the Houston area. Monds says the franchisees already have scouted the next few locations and hope to be able to open a new restaurant every six months. Zaxby’s most popular items are hand-breaded Chicken Fingerz and Jumbo Buffalo Wings, smothered in a choice of eight sauces with names like Wimpy, Tongue Torch, Nuclear and Insane. The 3,495-square-foot Spring restaurant can seat 90 guests and will offer drive-thru and phone-in services. Company officials think the Texas market can support as many as 250 Zaxby’s restaurants, with 50 of those in the Houston area.” [Houston Business Journal]

, , , ,
Openings and Closings
11/19/08 2:54pm

Smashburger: Meat Candy for Strip Centers

by
Reliant Center, Restaurants, Retail, Strip Centers
6 Comments

“Houston’s first Smashburger is going into an unnamed strip center at the intersection of Main Street and Kirby Drive, right beside Reliant Center,” reports Globe St.‘s Connie Gore:

[Ryan McMonagle, Smashburger’s CFO] tells GlobeSt.com that Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston each will start with two “grade A-plus locations” this year and reach eight to 10 before 2009 ends, putting the new chain on “a clear path to 30 over the next three-year period” in each city.

What’s a Smashburger?

Jason Sheehan of the Houston Press‘s sister publication Denver Westword says it’s a burger joint where

the burgers are truly smashed — thrown and mashed onto the flat-top grill with a press that I at first thought was for show, then realized played an important role. When a half-pound of ground, nicely fatty Angus beef is whacked onto the hot steel, it produces a flood of meat juice that caramelizes instantly into a crispy halo of blood and fat around the edge of the burger. It’s like meat candy, the delicacy you lose when a burger is cooked on a slotted grill — the traditional cooking surface for burgers smashed by hand.

Photo of Denver Smashburger interior: Flickr user johnny_nissan [license]

, , , , , , ,
Downtown
09/18/08 4:37pm

Coming Soon to Houston: More of the Pitter-Patter of Little Pita Pits

by
Montrose, Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Shopping Centers, Strip Centers, Sugar Land
2 Comments

Pita Pit, 3303 C Highway 6, Sugar Land, Texas

Sandwich franchise Pita Pit has a store tucked inside a Greenway Plaza office building. Two more locations debuted recently: one at Highway 6 and Williams Trace in Sugar Land (opened in May) and another in the tunnel beneath McKinney St. Downtown (opened in July). A new store in a strip center at Westheimer and Fountainview is listed as “coming soon” on the company website.

Now a source reports that a total of 10 Pita Pit franchises are planned for the Houston area — including one in the shopping center at 3939 Montrose Blvd., just north of the Hurricane-Ike-swept Diedrich’s Coffee, near Marble Slab.

Photo of Sugar Land Pita Pit: Pita Pit

, , , , , , , , , , , ,
Restaurants
02/11/08 8:37am

Death and Mortadella

by
No Comments

Spicy Pickle Sub Shop, Las Vegas, NV

Isn’t this a big part of what makes Houston great? Anyone can move in here and . . . set up a chain of franchise sub shops! Coming soon to our city: 10 new Spicy Pickle sandwich stores. The local franchisee, Peter Forastiere, ran a related family business in Springfield, Massachusetts:

“I’ve always felt there were similarities between the restaurant business and the funeral home business,” Forastiere says. “People are very sensitive during a time of grief, and people are also very sensitive with what they put in their stomachs. The products may be different, but the customer service is very similar.”

Imagine how much better we could all have been eating here — if only SCI had realized this sooner.

Photo of Las Vegas Spicy Pickle: Flickr user purpletwinkie

, ,
Commercial Real Estate
11/15/07 11:36am

Stuck in Traffic? Pull Over for a Philly Cheesesteak by the Wayside

by
Development Strategy, East End, New Construction, Restaurants, Retail, Shopping Centers, Strip Centers
No Comments

New Shopping Center at the Northeast Corner of I-45 South and Wayside, Houston

The Lenny’s Sub Shops continue their Houston conquest. The franchise is now up to seventeen stores, with eleven opening soon, including one in this new shopping center about to begin construction on the Gulf Freeway feeder just north of Wayside. That’s almost a third of the way to the company’s goal!

The I-45 (northbound) and Wayside property developer is Bobby Orr, who complained to the Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff about the glut of suburban strip centers back in June: “We’re going urban,” he said. And really, the Orr Commercial properties are all over the map. But don’t be fooled by the side-of-the-freeway location and strip-center layout on this one: Luring hungry drivers out of inner-loop freeway traffic jams is an important part of Houston’s urban spirit.

, , , , , , , , , ,
Alternative Energy
06/22/07 7:55am

Here Come the Franchise Biodiesel Plants

by
Environmental, Green Design and Development
No Comments

Biodiesel Production Plant in Carl’s Corner, TexasSure, everybody’s excited about biodiesel because it’s new and rare. But just wait until smelly biodiesel production plants start littering the landscape like fast-food franchises.

If you’ve got $1.95 million, you can set one up too. A company out of Florida is selling “prepackaged,” turnkey biodiesel plants from a German factory. Let them come, and they will build it:

As part of its business-in-a-box plan, Xenerga promises long-term, exclusive deals to purchase waste cooking oil from a network of suppliers whose clients include McDonald’s Corp. and Chili’s Grill & Bar. Xenerga’s supply side also focuses on rendered animal fats like beef tallow, chicken grease and pig fat, all of which are plentiful in Texas.

Interest from this region has been strong, the company told the Houston Business Journal: a plant in west Houston is planned already.

Xenerga also promises to deliver customers willing to buy the estimated 5 million gallons of biodiesel per year that the plants produce.

Each Xenerga plant only takes up half an acre, requires two employees at a time, and can be sited almost anywhere from light industrial parks to rural farmland.

Photo: Biodiesel production plant in Carl’s Corner, Texas, by flickr user Nicola Matsukis

, , , ,
Shopping Centers
06/18/07 7:49am

Shopping Center Update: Franchises, Anchors, and All Those Nail Salons

by
Strip Centers
No Comments

Three items from the world of Houston shopping-center development:

  • A suburban shopping-center developer complains to the Chronicle about Houston’s glut of bland suburban strip centers:

    Retail developer Bobby Orr says the suburbs are overridden with unanchored strip centers, so his company is developing projects closer to the center of town . . .

    Orr believes there are “only so many nail salons and dry cleaners” that can fill up suburban centers and that there’s pent-up demand in urban areas where housing density is increasing.

  • As if on cue, two former Subway franchise owners tell the Houston Business Journal that they’re going to flood the Houston market with more than a hundred new Submarina sandwich shops. The first store opens the beginning of August, at I-45 and Airline.
  • And speaking of anchors, the HBJ also reports that Staples will soon be rescuing shopping centers all around Houston from that nail-biting anonymity:

    Staples officials are tight-lipped about the company’s plans for Houston, but local retail sources say they’ve seen Staples stores on as many as 11 different site plans for future retail developments ranging from Katy, to League City to Spring, as well as a close-in site at Post Oak and San Felipe.

    Staples has already signed a lease for a new store at I-45 South and Almeda Genoa.

, , , , , ,
« Previous Page