Cheba Hut Shows Exponential Growth at a Corporate Level

Cheba Hut’s corporate team has made it a priority to reinvest in the brand at the corporate level. The sandwich shop is working to expand their presence in Las Vegas, by adding three stores in under 18 months, all corporate owned.

Unlike other franchise concepts, Cheba Hut makes it a points to reinvest at the corporate level in order to sharpen training tactics and identify pain points as the brand continues to grow.

“Opening these company stores really helps us see things from the franchisee's perspective. We use the stores to test everything. If it doesn’t make it in the company store, it doesn’t even make it to the franchise community,” said Cheba Hut COO Marc Torres.

The most-recent Cheba Hut store to benefit from corporate training ground was the brand’s Ahwatukee, Phoenix location. The shop was able to use new materials and procedures the corporate stores had seen as successful. These efficiencies helped the location open their first week with $39,000 in sales. Steady sales continued into the months that followed. Torres attributes this success to the model designed at corporate franchised locations.

Another benefit corporate locations have found is the importance of pre-opening marketing. The brand has worked to double the number of product drops before an opening and systemically execute their product drop method.

“Getting out there and promoting the brand face to face to the community really sets the tone and gets a buzz going. We want community members to be excited about Cheba Hut coming to town. We’ve seen a lot of sales success because of the effort we put into the pre-opening process,” said Torres.

The brand’s corporate locations have also been the training ground for enhancing the brand’s bar program. All Cheba Hut locations serve alcohol and they are excited to implement new tactics to make the program not only a ‘cool component’ of Cheba Hut -- but a more profitable one. The bar is a huge differentiator for the sub franchise and is seen to be a key profit generator for franchisees.

Experimenting with new offerings and procedures at the brand’s corporate stores has allowed franchisees to implement best practices right from the start so they are able to see success with minimal pain points.

Cheba Hut finds that with corporate understanding the franchisee perspective they have seen a higher return on franchisee buy-in and more success overall.

Shares Torres, “I’m proud of how committed our corporate team is to growing our corporate locations. The training and feedback we received from owning our own stores is a key differentiator in providing unparalleled support to our franchisees. We look forward to continuing to grow and improve as we introduce Cheba Hut to new cities across the U.S.”