Food Franchise Business · Success Stories

Supper Thyme; The Keri Willenborg Story

Success Stories

By Amy Covington

What do you do when you realize that your family members are leading separate lives, eating meals on the go or watching TV while chowing down on takeout? Keri Willenborg and Cher Stenger of Omaha, Nebraska quit their jobs. Of course, they still needed to make a living, so they took a chance on a unique business concept.

Willenborg knew she wanted to start her own business to spend more time with her family. She considered getting into art for children. She was still mulling over ideas when she attended the Super Bowl in San Diego with her husband. As fate would have it, a group of women sat near Willenborg and struck up a conversation about once-a-month cooking. Intrigued, Willenborg asked them elaborate.

"When I got home from the Super Bowl I researched about once a month cooking," said Willenborg. "It turns out that my great aunts were doing this in farming communities. It is very common in rural farming communities."

Regardless of how things used to be, these days families are on the fast track, with little time for recreation let alone remembering to pick something out for dinner (not to mention shopping for all the ingredients). This very reason is behind many franchisees' motivation to go into business for themselves. Willenborg took it a step further when she and her business partners started their own business, while helping hundreds of other busy professionals out of the increasingly common dining "rut."

"There is a disconnect there," Willenborg said. "People want to eat home cooked meals every night but don't have the time to prepare them. I was raised to eat dinner together with my family every night and I'm 33 years old. The same thing for my business partner and husband. It's not just an Omaha thing and it's not just my demographic. Kids today have a lot of activities. My 18-month-old has more activities than me. That's the way the world has changed.

In June 2003, Willenborg and her partners founded Supper Thyme, originally Omaha Supper Thyme, the nationally expanding franchise company. Supper Thyme is a meal preparation company where customers, who are generally busy career women, prepare meals in advance in a state-of-the-art kitchen. "There are stations and they [customers] rotate from station to station preparing meals they have pre-chosen on our website. We provide the pots and pans, containers and laser printed recipes."

But it wasn't always so streamlined. When Willenborg and her partners decided to try the idea in the real world it was not the polished operation that is today. "We set everything up in a friend's cafe that had 16 booths," Willenborg said. "We brought everything to the cafe and put labels on the booths and invited people to test it out. We knew it would never work, it was a nightmare, it wouldn't have even passed with the health department. I wanted to cry, I was depressed and deflated."

Fortunately no one was willing to give up. "We were all passionate about the concept but we just couldn't do it in the cafe. If we were going to do this we would have to do it big. We had to lease a space. It was a calling and we all felt so strongly that there was a need for this concept. We were in a facility within a few weeks."

Willenborg and her partners wanted to jazz up the old tradition of once-a-month cooking. "We commercialized and modernized an age-old way to cook." Willenborg said. But instead of cooking up casseroles in a church basement, they invited the community to their vibrant, fun-filled full-equipped kitchen to prepare meals for their families in a dynamic environment. "Women want it to be fun, an experience, something to look forward to."

Even though the idea of preparing meals in advance is not new, it was relatively unknown in more metropolitan areas, which presented some obstacles in the beginning for Willenborg et al. "It [the concept] wasn't well received at first" said Willenborg. "People didn't understand--they truly didn't get it. A lot of people thought we were a cooking school."

To overcome this challenge, the Supper Thyme crew started hosting open houses to educate the public about the process. The idea was to get them familiar with the concept and to taste the food. "People got to taste samples of the food and cook a meal that they took home."

Willenborg employed other aggressive marketing tactic to get the word out about Supper Thyme. Her marketing experience played a key role in the concept catching on. Drawing on her adept marketing skills, she positioned herself a family dining expert by talking to schools and parent groups. All of her business partners brought something unique to the table, which contributed to the success of the rapidly growing company.

"My partner Cher has a background in management, my husband in finance and management, and he's also good with computers; he handles the website," said Willenborg. "We've all been successful in our former businesses. Having a business background helped when we started out."

As the idea caught on Willenborg started getting calls from around the country from people interested in buying a franchise. At first she and her partners shied away from the idea. "But the more we were asked about franchising the more we knew we were on to something."

To make Supper Thyme into a franchise company Willenborg and her partners knew they needed outside help. We hired FranCorp. They gave us a successful blueprint for franchising our business," Willenborg said. "They were truly instrumental in our success. They helped us with the legalities and red tape."

Overall, it took 16 months to complete the process. In the meantime, similar concepts were popping up and franchising and franchising at a faster rate. "I'm glad we grew slowly so that we could accommodate the growth. Now we have 14 stores."

Surprisingly, Supper Thyme's original recipe database consisted of all of the partners' family recipes. Today, Supper Thyme has a chef who keeps their database fresh and innovative with entrees like apricot glazed crusted chicken and stuffed bell peppers.

One of the most important considerations when thinking about buying a franchise is the level of training and support the franchisor offers the franchisee. As a Supper Thyme franchisee, you'll get individualized attention from Day 1.

"We work with them week by week," Willenborg said. "We help them place yellow page ads, get permits, work with health departments-everything down to the signage on the front door. We provide training on computer and reporting systems, inventory, ordering food, and marketing. I work with franchisees individually on marketing and help with PR for the initial grand opening. We offer moral support for the grand opening because no matter what, the first week is crazy."

For those thinking about starting their own business, it takes a winning combination of determination, uniqueness of concept, demand, adaptability, location, trial and error and a lot of luck. As a franchisee you sidestep many of these factors because they've already been done for you. This may explain why franchise businesses are generally more successful in their first year than independent businesses. But sometimes a good idea is all it takes to launch a successful business.