Q&A: New Biggby Coffee president talks expansion plans
Biggby Coffee has named a new president as it looks to expand its footprint.
The Michigan-based coffee chain has named its chief financial officer Erin Kaylor as president of the brand. She will oversee financial success and franchise system development for the chain, which currently operates more than 430 locations across 13 states.
Kaylor joined Biggby as CFO in 2023. Previously, she spent 21 years in a variety of finance roles at McDonald’s, including finance director of its U.S. restaurant portfolio.
“Erin is a remarkable leader whose people-first philosophy perfectly aligns with everything Biggby Coffee stands for,” said Mike McFall, co-founder and co-CEO of the chain. “She brings incredible financial acumen and franchise experience, but more than that, she deeply understands our mission to improve lives through coffee. I couldn’t be more confident in her ability to lead us into our next chapter.”
In an interview with Chain Store Age, Kaylor described her vision for Biggby as being focused on providing value to customers while supporting franchise owners as it plans to grow its footprint.
What is Biggby’s mission when it comes to serving the customer?
Given the economic uncertainty that we face in the world today, it's really important that we're delivering value for the coffee consumer. Value is about what you get for the price that you pay. We want to be delivering on the customer experience and making sure that we're greeting people and brightening their day every time they visit a Biggby location. That experience really hinges on having franchise owners who are thrilled to be part of your brand. We treat our franchise owners with the respect that they deserve. They are out there as independent small business owners, and we are their support system.
What initiatives does Biggby plan on launching to support franchise owners in the future?
We are investing in a lot of technology. We have changes coming to our app in the next year that customers will see. We also have some changes happening on the technology front for how we communicate directly with our franchise owners, even down to their teams and their baristas, who are the folks in the stores making it happen every day. We are a little bit unique in that we are 100% franchised. Business really does happen through our franchise owners. Supporting them and making sure that their business is successful is important to me.
What is the size of a standard Biggby location, and how many new locations does the company anticipate opening this year?
We have a couple of different types of locations. We have drive-thru only locations, which are as small as 900 sq. ft. Our typical location is located in a shopping center with a drive-thru, so we're typically on the end of a small plaza. Those are somewhere between 1,200 and 1,400 sq. ft. Not having a drive-thru in today's environment doesn't really allow you to best serve the customer, so even though we do have some locations today that don't have one, it is a critical component for us as we build new locations.
We are at 432 locations right now. I do anticipate that we are probably going to build out another 45 to 50 this year. We have been growing at a pretty solid clip – roughly 50 to 70 new locations per year over the last three to four years.
Where does Biggby plan on expanding in the future?
Our franchise owners are the ones who are ultimately selecting the location where they would like to open their shop. We support them and we certainly approve the final location. The things to give consideration to are where neighboring Biggby locations might be, customer traffic patterns in a marketplace, and other business drivers. There's a number of factors that go into the analysis, and we do use mapping software that allows us to get that data so that we can make an educated decision.
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We are in 13 states today. Our plan is to move “down and out.” The big strategy is to continue to go down and out from the markets where we are and keep pushing south and towards the coast.
How does Biggby stand out in a competitive coffee marketplace?
We are going to continue to deliver on what we have brought customers since the day we opened our very first store 30 years ago, and that is treating everyone as if they are our key focus and making sure that we're making their day brighter and serving them great coffee.
