Smart Business Magazine, Mar 2013

The Treliving File NAME JIM TRELIVING TITLE CHAIRMAN AND CEO COMPANY BOSTONS RESTAURANT SPORTS BAR March 2013 Smart Business Dallas 19 Born Virden Manitoba What was your first job and what business lessons did you learn from it that you use today I delivered groceries for a family that owned a small grocery store and I think the biggest thing I learned was persistence the stick with it sort of thing The place where I delivered groceries it was very important that they be delivered on time You had to come there clean and ready to go to work And you had to provide great service That was extremely important the service aspect of it being on time and getting the groceries out to people right away Those things stuck in my mind when I went into the restaurant business Do you have a main business philosophy that you use to guide you I believe very much in dealing with people on a face to face basis And I want to do business with people that I can have fun with people that enjoy the same things I do What trait do you think is most important for a business executive to have in order to be a successful leader You have to have honesty and integrity You have to be honest with your people and honest with the franchisees youre dealing with Of course its inevitable that youre going to have problems with your franchisees from time to time but you sit down and discuss it with them so that you understand their side and they understand your side And then you both make a decision on what youre going to do and you go forward with it together as a team Whats the best advice anyone ever gave you My dad gave me a couple of good pieces of advice a long time ago Always leave a little something on the table for somebody else and always work hard and do the things that you want to do that you enjoy doing Unfortunately weve had a fair amount of franchisees that even though they have a good solid track record when theyve reached the date when theyre supposed to build that next store in their territory they couldnt get the financing they needed to do it Bostons approach in these situations has generally been to give its existing franchisees more time to strengthen their market footing so they would eventually be able to obtain financing to build the additional stores in their territories The plan was that they agreed to build a certain number of stores in their territory in a certain period of time and if they didnt if they failed to do that then they would lose their territory and they would lose the money they had paid in upfront fees to hold their territory Treliving says We began to see with many of them that wed have to wait a little while until the money for financing started to loosen up again We saw that we would need to reset those dates so our franchisees would have more time to build those new stores and not lose their territories We basically had to rectify the dates so we wouldnt go offside with our franchisees So this financing situation has really slowed down the growth of everybody not just new franchisees but old franchisees as well Find other sources Even though the lending picture hasnt been good from traditional sources of financing for restaurant franchises i e banks and large finance companies such as GE Capital and others Bostons and other restaurant chains have had a degree of success finding financing for some of their franchisees via nontraditional sources such as private equity firms A lot of people are going out and finding independent money on the side Treliving says So we started looking as well for some of these new sources that would deal with us For many years we had been dealing with a couple of major companies for financing but now one of them had pulled out of the business completely and the other one had