Location Analysis Of A Franchise Restaurant :: essays research papers

Location Analysis of a Franchise Resturaunt Problem Statement: Boston Pizza International Inc. is a Canadian owned and operated restaurant. It has many facilities in Canada and has opened facilities in the United States and in Southeast Asia. Boston Pizza is penetrating further into the Canadian market and is opening at a new location on 8th Street in Saskatoon. The chosen location has been the home of many previous restaurant failures. It seems odd that any restaurant would want to open in a location which has proven to be unsuccessful. What characteristics does Boston Pizza have that other restaurants don't have that may allow this location to be successful? This new location will be the second Boston Pizza franchise in Saskatoon, complimenting the facility operating on 50th Street. Will the market areas of these two restaurants overlap? * * * * * The early beginnings of this restaurant occurred in Edmonton, Alberta. In 1963 the first Boston Pizza and Spaghetti House opened. The name of the restaurant is seemingly odd because Boston is the name of a city in the United States, and has nothing to do with a pizza restaurant located in Edmonton. Ron Coyle, the original owner, named the restaurant 'Boston' because the Boston Bruins NHL hockey team was the favorite of the Edmonton area in the 1960's and he wanted his business to use sports as a promotion. Another reason, which may have been more of a coincidence, was that his accountant's surname was Boston ("only way", 37). Boston Pizza and Spaghetti House became a popular restaurant and in 1968 it began to operate as a franchise. In mid-1968, Jim Treliving, a former drum major for the RCMP, and his friend Don Spence bought the franchising rights for British Columbia with the exception of Vancouver. They opened their first unit in Penticton, British Columbia, and in the first year of operation the pizza restaurant grossed $52,000 and the nightclub which was co-located with the restaurant grossed $80,000 (Cameron, 16). Meanwhile, franchise units opened in Edmonton, Winnipeg and Vancouver. As the pizza chain grew, Treliving and George Melville (who had become involved with Treliving's restaurants as a financial planner) became involved in real estate ventures in Hawaii and the Okanagon Valley and also in oil investments in British Columbia (Cameron, 16). In 1983, these two men purchased Boston Pizza Spaghetti House from the original owner Ron Coyle for $3 million. This money was raised from private lenders ("recipe is simple", 16). During that same year, the headquarters of Boston Pizza was moved from Edmonton, Alberta to Richmond, British Columbia where it is found today.