neal.johnson wrote:RonnieD wrote:Wow. I worked for Joe (Wheatley) about 17 years ago, before I set sail on my J. Gumbo's adventure. He is a great guy and OK Bayou was a really fun place to work. Lots of great memories. I figured Joe's was just a Louisville fixture; this is a loss for sure. I wish I had been able to make it back over for all you can eat Étouffée one last time.
Speaking of J. Gumbo's. Why are there only just a couple of stores remaining in Louisville? Working downtown, I miss it dearly. The one off of Poplar and UL also shut their doors. I only know of the Frankfort Ave. location now. What gives?
I don't think I'm giving away any insider secrets to say that very early on in the expansion of the brand, the development team we partnered with was overly aggressive and grew the market from 2 stores to 8 without making any moves to grow the customer base at the same time. Therefore the existing customer base was cannibalized to try and prop up 8 stores from just 2. (Case in point, my sales at Frankfort Ave were cut in half when 4SL opened). As one might expect, this model quickly collapses in on itself. When that started to happen, we bought out the development partner that caused the chaos and attempted to salvage what we could, but one-by-one, the stores failed to find an organic local market that could support it and we were strapped for cash due to buying it all back so we had no marketing fund to draw from to support those stores. Obvious ones like Dixie Hwy and the Summit were closed immediately and the rest held on as long as they could. Lyndon closed when Billy's father took over the Frankfort Ave location and was unable to operate two locations at once (he's an older fellow and simply wasn't able to keep pace). 4SL closed when our lease was up with the Devil (Cordish) and we got out of there as fast as we could. Subsequent efforts to maintain a downtown location were fraught with peril (the final spot on 5th and Market saw the property reclaimed from the LL by the bank and all tenants forced out). During this time, a new development partner was introduced and, given the success in developing markets in Ohio and Indiana, focus was shifted to outlying markets. Honestly, we were always more successful in Ohio than Louisville, no idea why. There have been attempts to revive the Louisville market, but we knew from experience that we would not be able to operate more than a couple of company-owned locations, so we were at the mercy of independent operators to help drive the revival. That never seemed to materialize. So we are left with two Louisville locations on Citadel way off Hurstborne and Frankfort Ave. After that I left the company, so I have no idea what the growth strategy is currently.
Hope that helps tell a really long and boring story of what can go wrong with brand expansion.