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Article- Success Story- Zoup!
Leo Mariani’s Commitment to Zoup! Starts With a Commitment to the Market
Leo’s first Zoup! franchise opened in Allentown, Pennsylvania in August of 2009, and his second will open in southern New Jersey in January of 2010. Over the next several years, Leo is contractually committed to opening a total of five Zoup! franchises throughout eastern Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey, a major step for someone just breaking into the restaurant franchising field, but his trust in the corporation’s values bring him the confidence to make the jump.
Leo Mariani spent the majority of his career in the telecom sales industry. Selling, he says, gave him a unique perspective on the needs and wants of the public. “I feel like I’m able to identify good opportunities for things; my work has given me a pretty good understanding of the desires of customers, so I can usually tell when something will resonate well.”
When he found Zoup!—by chance one afternoon on a business trip—he quickly realized that the company’s model fit perfectly into a niche that had been missing from fast-casual dining. He hadn’t been looking, necessarily, for this sort of opportunity, but when he discovered it he couldn’t pass the chance to extend the franchise’s reach to his home in the Northeast.
Even with his excitement, however, Leo is not the kind of person to leap into serious commitment based solely on enjoying one afternoon’s lunch. After returning home, he began exhaustively researching. “Yeah, it became a little obsessive,” he laughs. “I’d say I read around 60 franchising books and took about 10 personality tests to see if I was suited for the work. I looked into each of the other franchising opportunities that were available, as well.” Again and again, he continued to return to Zoup! as the perfect fit for him and the customers in the area.
“I’d say it took about two years, from the time I found the idea to the time my first location opened.” The due diligence process took about half that time, but after deciding to commit, the second half was filled with his total effort to making the venture as successful as possible.
“There are a lot of things that I just don’t think you can delegate,” he explains. “I spent nearly nine months dedicating myself to finding a site for the restaurant. I’m not the kind of person to trust a realtor for that kind of thing, so every Saturday I woke up at 4 A.M. and drove around looking at sites until the middle of the afternoon. Every single weekend for several months, until we found the right site with the right demographic and the right corporate environment. It was exhausting, but necessary to be successful.” It was this wholehearted commitment that has assured the success of Leo’s new operations.
“Every corporation has a culture, whether implicit or explicit, that drives everything they do. When it comes down to it, I have a deep belief in the philosophy Zoup! espouses,” says Leo. His commitment may have been difficult and time-consuming, but his trust in the company is enough to make it worthwhile.
Why Zoup!?
“Do you want to know what differentiates Zoup! from all the other franchises I looked into?” Asks Leo, rephrasing my question. “It’s the culture—and I know that they all say that—but I’m comfortable investing a lot of money, and my future, into them because I believe that they’re the only place I’ve seen that truly embodies the core values they represent—from [Zoup! co-founder and CEO] Eric Ersher all the way down to the single franchises.”
The Biggest Challenge
“People come to Zoup! because we’re newer, and they appreciate our quality, but the challenge is to keep them coming back. For us, we have to make our restaurant an experience—clean, friendly, tasty, or else people will come in once and not return. We take pride in the experience of our locations. We think that that’s our advantage, and the challenge to our success.”
