My career in Franchising started in 2006 when my wife and I decided to take more control of our financial future and open our first location of Edible Arrangements in Youngstown, OH.  At the time, I had a very lucrative job in the pharmaceutical industry, but I hated going to work most days.  Our youngest child was close to two, so my wife had an itch to get back to work.  The combination of these factors led us to start looking into franchising, and that is how we discovered Edible.  I had a wealth of experience in food service, so we felt that Edible was a good fit for our skill set.

Fast-forward 17 years later, my wife and I owned 9 locations in 3 states and eventually became the all-time leader in total gross revenue at just over $52 million.  We were named Multi Unit Owner of the Year in 2010, and Franchisee of the Year in 2013.  Our location in Youngstown, OH was the top store in sales in 2020, 20211, 2022, and 2023.  It is also the only single location in the history of the brand to eclipse $2M in sales in one calendar year.  While we were proud of our accomplishments, the recognition we appreciated the most was when our Regional Manager, Shakera Brown, was named 2013 Manager of the Year.  Shakera came to work for us on our first day in 2006 with not one day of work experience and flourished in the role to such a degree that she ascended through the ranks to run our entire muti-location enterprise.  I cried tears of joy when she walked up on stage to receive her award and $5,000 check from our Founder and CEO, Tariq Farid.

During the time we were growing our Edible enterprise, we also decided to invest in a small fast-casual food brand called The Simple Greek.  The concept spawned from a TV show – CNBC’s The Profit with Marcus Lemonis.  We were very early adopters of the brand, and when we opened our first location in Youngstown, OH, we broke all existing franchise records.  In our opening week we did over $56,000 in business, and were generating more revenue per square foot than a Chick-Fil-A.  Over the course of the next 18 months, we opened two additional locations.  We performed at such a high level, that Marcus Lemonis, owner of the brand and billionaire owner of Camping World, asked me to take over as CEO of The Simple Greek. 

I moved the corporate office to Youngstown, OH, and I had high hopes of starting to scale this fast-casual Mediterranean brand into a national powerhouse.  Unfortunately, six months after I started, the industry was devastated by the Covid 19 pandemic.  We took extraordinary measures to make sure franchisees survived by suspending royalties and fees, and I essentially worked for free while we decided how to move forward.  Marcus and I decided the best thing to do for the franchisees was to sell the brand.  We negotiated a deal with WOWorks that would provide the store owners with more support and infrastructure.  Even though I sold myself out of a job that I loved, it was the right thing to do.  I sold my locations to WOWorks as corporate locations and went back to focusing my energies on Edible.

The pandemic was a very different story for Edible – our numbers exploded.  After an incredible 2020-2022, Lori and I decided it was time to sell Edible and chart a new path forward.  We sold our remaining Edible locations to a long-time employee and current business partner and then started to evaluate other options in the franchise space.