Top Players in Franchise Development: Mac Malchow

The restaurant industry is in Mac Malchow’s DNA. Since he was only 15 years old, Malchow worked just about every position there is at a restaurant—from the front of the house to the back of the house.

By the time he turned 21, he took on a job as a delivery driver for Toppers Pizza in La Crosse, Wisconsin. It started as a way to earn money to pay the bills—but what he didn’t realize at the time was that that first job with Toppers would eventually transform into something much greater.

Near the end of his time in college, Malchow helped out with some local store marketing for the La Crosse franchisee’s two locations. It was in that role that he discovered his love for the Toppers brand and its unique culture. That passion eventually landed him a role at the Toppers Pizza Headquarters, where he started as a field marketing coordinator for the company.

Over the next two years, he personally opened 20 new Toppers locations in cities like Chicago, Lincoln, Fort Worth and Minneapolis. He has watched the company triple in size since he first came on board five years ago, skyrocketing to 76 locations and counting.

• Constant communication

• Each member of the development team needs to be up-to-speed on where candidates are in the process and what needs to happen to get them to the next stage

• The past two franchisee groups that we brought into our system

• One group will be developing 13 units in Northern Colorado and Southern Wyoming

• The other group will be developing 22 units in Northern Virginia and Southern Maryland

• Both groups are large multi-unit operators for well-known restaurant brands and both have strong pizza delivery roots

• The fact that both groups are coming back to their passion (on opposite sides of the country) with Toppers Pizza is a true testament to what we have going on right now

Working as a team to dial in on our ideal franchisee. In the last two years we shifted our attention and focus on bringing experienced restaurateurs into our system, who want to expand their brand portfolio by opening multiple Toppers Pizza restaurants.

What specific steps do your most successful franchisees take in order to build and grow their respective businesses? And what do you do to set them up for success?

• Surround themselves with talented people

• Nobody can operate a restaurant themselves, let alone multiple stores

• The most successful franchisees have brought very talented people into their ranks and diligently work on developing them into great Managers and Supervisors

• To assist our franchisees in attracting talent, we’ve put many programs in place, including our e-learning portal and New Store Opening support teams

• Attracting the right franchisees is our main goal

• We prefer to think in terms of attracting five to eight terrific franchisee groups each year for the next five-plus years

• If we can do that, we will easily meet our unit count goals for the next 10 years