From left, Palm Berries co-founders Ahsan Mehmood, his sister Noor Zahid, and their friend Chandler Gottlieb started their acai bowl business with a food truck.
The acai bowls sold at Palm Berries didn’t originate through menu development in a corporate kitchen, but rather in the homes of its founders.
Siblings and business partners Ahsan Mehmood and Noor Zahid were longtime fans of acai bowls and would often make them for their friends, to rave reviews. Their enjoyment of the fruit dish, the positive feedback they received and the lack of other healthy options in North Carolina were all deciding factors in launching the business.
Together with Zahid’s friend from college, Chandler Gottlieb, the founders started Palm Berries in 2019 via a food truck in Denver, North Carolina, a city just outside of the Charlotte metro.
“We had no idea what we were doing, but we worked really hard to understand the systems and learn from our mistakes,” Mehmood said. “It was tough in the beginning, but it was also rewarding. The customers loved the bowls we made, started posting about us and the word spread like wildfire. It blew up from there with a lot of people coming to try the bowls.”
A year after they started the food truck, Mehmood said they invested all the money they had and were able to open their first brick-and-mortar store. Today, they have six locations open with another in development.
“We went to a few places with the food truck and now some of the places we visited have stores nearby,” Gottlieb said. “It was a good strategy, getting to these towns before we opened a store in them, testing the market a bit before we moved in.”
Of the six locations open, four are company-owned and two are franchised. The decision to franchise was based on requests from potential partners and the ease of growth.
“We had a lot of people always asking us about bringing Palm Berries to different cities, and it’s tough to expand because we want to make sure we don’t lose our quality,” Zahid said. “So, we thought the best way to go was franchising, especially with the level of interest and passion from customers who wanted to be owners.
The acai bowls served at Palm Berries use a pre-blended base to help support efficient operations.
“We decided to go that route, with a focus on replicating this model and simplifying it to where anyone can run it,” Zahid said. “We didn’t have business or ownership experience before this, so we figured if we can do this, we can help others own one, too.”
Mehmood said the growth strategy for the time being is regional, with the brand having a strong customer base in North Carolina, and awareness in South Carolina and Georgia. In addition to franchisees benefitting from the customer base, Mehmood said it’s easier on the supply chain.
Growth in the acai bowl category isn’t limited to Palm Berries. In recent years, brands serving the blended fruit bowls—think Playa Bowls, Everbowl, Vitality Bowls and Sobol—have become more common as acai dishes gained popularity. To ensure Palm Berries keeps pace with competitors, Gottlieb said the company created a system focused on efficiency.
“We pre-blend our bases in bulk, which is very different from how a lot of other bowl brands operate,” Gottlieb said. “By pre-blending the bases, we’re able to put them in huge ice cream-like tubs and store them. Because they’re pre-blended, as soon as an order comes through, we can scoop that base, put it in a bowl, add toppings and get it out the window in about 20 seconds, which is a really fast turnaround time.”
Product quality, he noted, remains high. “We’ve worked hard on making sure the consistency of the bases is up to a high standard and are just as creamy as if they weren’t pre-blended and were made to order,” Gottlieb said. “It also gives us a fast turnaround time and eliminates the bottleneck of having to make the base for every order that comes in.”
As the brand grows, Mehmood said Palm Berries is looking for a mix of single- and multi-unit franchisees to implement the system elsewhere. The cost to open a store ranges from $150,000 to $250,000.
“We really look for the individuals who are personable and part of a community,” Mehmood said. “The reason we want them to be so involved is because that’s how we were when we started at zero. We had to be involved in the community to claw our way in and make the connections we have.”