With 22 years in the restaurant industry, Papa John’s franchisees Bo and John Knapp are bringing a new restaurant Mediterranean concept to Greenville.
The company, Perfect Delivery, will open Babaziki Mediterranean Grill in mid-February in the Magnolia Plaza development on Woodruff Road. That’s in addition to 19 of about 25 Papa John’s restaurants throughout the Upstate and Western North Carolina. The Knapps sat down with UBJ to talk about planning, execution and building on an existing business.
How does this new venture fit with the existing business?
JK: Our experience with Papa John’s has been tremendous leading into this new venture. We have a whole organization and support staff, a lot of whom are involved in Babaziki from accounting to marketing to operations, about 20 people. There’s a lot of crossover. We hope that’ll help us make this new one successful. It’s allowed us to do it the right way from the beginning.
What is the right way?
JK: I guess the thing that we really tried to do is not take any shortcuts from the very beginning. In any area of the business or any possible scenario, we try to never settle on the phrase “good enough.” We have the luxury to do that because we have the organization and the time to devote to that, which is not common. Usually in the entrepreneurial role you just throw everything you have at it and hope for the best when you come out the other side of it.
What lessons have you learned from experience with Papa John’s?
BK: Even before that I was with PepsiCo and saw their restaurants all over the world. The most important thing is if you get the food right, everything else falls into place. The second thing is, image is everything. People want to go someplace that looks good; they have more confidence in the food.
Then we’ve got some important guidelines about how we hire people. We have what we call the “fairness doctrine” internally that’s basically about treating people how you want to be treated. Our retention rate for Papa John’s is way, way higher than the national average.
What the current discussion around franchising Babaziki?
JK: If this location proves a success, we’d like to add an additional location, possibly here, possibly outside of Greenville. The real estate is such a determining factor.
What are some of the challenges?
JK: There’s a lot of stuff that we won’t know how to operate or how to build the systems in place for controls until the doors open. There’s some stuff that’s unknowable when it comes to food and labor and that sort of thing.
There are so many decision points and always trying to do things to the best of your ability gets kind of tough. You kind of start suffering decision fatigue where you just want it to be there and be done, but you can’t allow that to happen.
How did you settle on the location?
JK: Once we heard that Cabela’s was announced we knew that was going to be probably one of the largest draws in the state. Plus the visibility on Woodruff Road was very appealing. There’s plenty of office and daytime population within a few miles of Magnolia Park.
Tell us about the concept.
JK: First of all, we all love the region and really love the food that comes out of there. The food naturally lends itself to healthy and good eating, but the interesting thing is that it’s actually also really good food. You can eat healthy and actually enjoy it, which is a pretty major selling point. We think that’s where the U.S. is trending and where the market is trending on a daily basis. The area has a growing young professional active segment, which we hope lends itself to this type of food.
What are your other selling points?
JK: All of our meats are antibiotic- and hormone-free, the chicken is cage-free. All of our packaging is going to be sustainable. We tried to incorporate that into the restaurant design, which was a little bit tougher to do from an economic standpoint on some things.
Why go that route?
JK: It’s something we personally believe in. It makes me comfortable to go to a place and know that that’s part of their goals, and I think it’s important for future customers as well.
