The Power of Wild Bill's Mobile Franchise System

Mike Quilty, CEO at Wild Bill’s Craft Beverage Co., leads a franchise system that uses an innovative model to apply some of the oldest wisdom in the book: Go where the people are. Wild Bill’s Western-branded soda saloons provide their franchisees with an opportunity to claim a piece of the thriving in-person event industry by offering a crowd-pleasing product without much of the overhead and complexity associated with franchise businesses.

We like to say, “We ain’t Mild Bill’s – it’s Wild Bill’s.” It’s different.

The founder built a mobile one-ton Wild West saloon with kegs on the side and tap handles, and he drove it around to local fairs and festivals, selling these commemorative stainless-steel mugs. The value proposition is that once you buy the mug, you get unlimited refills for the day.

The beauty of the model is that you’re not buying the soda, you’re buying the mug, which is collectible and really a high-quality piece. Once you’ve bought one of our mugs, if you bring it to another event we’re at, you pay ten dollars and get unlimited refills for the day there, too.

It started as a very small regional business, but we’ve blown it up nationally over the last 24 years. Now, we have 60 of these saloons that travel around the country, and we operate in 30 states. Last year, we did 504 events. This year, we’ll do north of 600. We’ve sold over a million mugs.

We go to the crowds; we don’t wait for the crowd to come to us. And when you don’t have a permanent location, you don’t have to pay rent.

I’ve got a friend who opened an ice cream parlor, and he got the hours wrong, so he’s staffing noon to 4:00PM every afternoon when absolutely nobody is walking through buying ice cream. He was telling me, “Next summer, we’re going to change to 3:00 to 9:00PM.”

With our business model, that’s never a problem. Our hours are when an event is taking place. We are in the place people are, at the time they’re there.

We have fit our saloons inside more than 100 convention centers. We can go to college campuses or fairgrounds or sporting events. We have a saloon that can break down to fit through the front door of a hotel. We’ve done zoos and rodeos and company picnics and events at outlet malls. We’ve been in church parking lots – it’s really endless.

This isn’t an opportunity where you sit and say, “Where am I gonna go with this? What I am I gonna do?” You can go almost anywhere and do almost anything.

We’ve worked with veterans from almost every branch of the service. Our first batch of franchisees were Marines, and we’ve also worked with people from the Army, Navy, and Air Force.

There’s so much to say about what veterans bring to the table, but I summarize it this way: They’re leaders with integrity and who know how to manage people, take responsibility, and maintain a can-do attitude.

Pretty much all franchises look for veterans because we are so good at executing a playbook or manual. We can follow a plan. Becoming a great franchisee is all about applying yourself to training, and people who come from the military understand the idea of heavy training.

I was in the Navy, and one thing I learned there was that you have to lead by example. There can be no arrogance in the idea that you’re the leader – the military knocks that out of you. When I was on a submarine, the chief went into the bilge. If he’s going to make the E3 do it, he’s going to do it too. That’s something that stuck with me, as an officer: You need to get down into the trenches to lead.

Our most successful franchisees are real collaborators. We have all these resources: a CFO, a controller, a VP of ops, a franchisee success manager. The franchisees who really soak up knowledge from those people and ask questions and engage them are the ones who wind up doing the best. I think that engagement is a big piece.

I think many of our best franchisees, if they weren’t doing this, might be in sales. A good franchisee is a people person who can deal with event promoters and concessions companies and people who work for the venue.

At the end of the day, though, we’re a retail business. It’s all about the customer experience. We want the person who, when they shut out the lights at Comic Con, is going to keep the stand open as people are walking out past them because it’s a nice thing to do. Our people aren’t waving customers away as an event is breaking out because they want to get home.

You also really need to love doing events. This is a seasonal business – we work nine or ten months a year – so you do get time off, but when you’re in season and it’s the summer and it’s the weekend, you need to be excited to get on the road and go to these events. Franchisees who succeed with us, they like going to these events; some of them even bring their kids with them.

One thing I’ve learned is that, if you can avoid it, you do not want to go fast. I heard the founder of Honest Tea speak at an event, and he said, “Go slow, if you have the luxury of doing so. If you can afford it, go slow.”

When I reflected on that, I realized Navy SEALs take the same approach: “Go slow to go fast.”

We’re not one of these franchises that’s going to sell a thousand territories or 300 units. This year, we’re adding ten. Next year, we’ve set a goal of adding another ten. We know we can do that well. We feel like we’re moving at the right pace, and that really sets us up to support each franchisee. I truly do not want to bring people into this system and see them fail.

We’re also actively adding resources to our team to support franchisees better. We have a real finance team with a CFO and a controller. They provide significant support when it comes to QuickBooks, accounting, financial modeling, tax returns, helping franchisees register to do business in each state, and anything else they need help with.

Another thing we’ve learned over the last two years is that it’s crucial to provide great training. We do our on-site training at our Allentown, PA headquarters, and then franchisees have virtual follow-ups via Teams. We’ve developed a cadence where they come here, do the initial training, drive off with the equipment, and then do their first event with a trainer on site. That ensures their first event goes well and they feel really well-supported.

We recently hired one of our long-time franchisees’ daughters, who’s been with us since she was 14, to serve as our Franchisee Success Manager. She works with franchisees on route building because it’s really essential not to waste your time at bad events. Jasmine can help franchisees understand where the opportunities lie in their territories or steer them away from bad deals or events where they won’t be set up for success.

We’re looking forward to continuing to build this veteran-focused network at a reasonable pace that ensures people are successful.

Another piece of the business we haven’t even touched on is canned soda. When COVID happened and our events shut down, a lot of our customers started asking, “Where can I find your soda?” So, we started canning our soda, and we sell it through a variety of channels, including our website, Amazon, and a B2B platform called Faire Wholesale. We’ll sell over two million cans of soda this year. Many of our franchisees have begun selling canned soda as well.

We never expected to be in the business of selling soda to grocery stores and restaurants, but that’s what we do now. We’re excited to continue growing this platform in thoughtful ways that create even more value and opportunities for the franchisees we work with.