Milkshake Factory is the brainchild of Dana Edwards Manatos, center, pictured with brothers Mark Edwards, left, and Chris Edwards. Its locations churn out an array of gourmet milkshakes, such as chocolate-dipped strawberry, below.
CEO Dana Edwards Manatos gets visibly animated when she talks about crafting the flagship dessert for the business she launched 20 years ago and is now franchising.
“There is an art to making milkshakes,” said Manatos as she described the perfect dairy ratios of milk and ice cream required for one of Milkshake Factory’s hand-spun creations. “Our whole family legacy is our product.”
It’s a legacy that stretches back to 1914, when her great-grandparents, Greek immigrants Orania and Charlie Sarandou, opened a chocolate shop and soda fountain in Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood. Jump ahead four generations and Manatos, along with brothers Chris and Mark Edwards, were running the business, which they rebranded as Edward Marc Brands and grew as a chocolatier with a line of chocolate products sold in retailers across the country.
The Milkshake Factory was born in 2003 when Manatos, drawing on a college business project, worked to renovate the chocolate shop her mom, Dona, was still running on Pittsburgh’s south side. “I was trying to figure out how to even out the sales and drive revenue all year round,” said Manatos, as she noted the seasonality of the business and its reliance on special occasions such as Valentine’s Day.
The gourmet milkshakes—made using specially crafted syrups and with flavors such as chocolate-dipped strawberry, cookie dough fudge and bananas Foster—were a hit and the shop became a popular destination for locals, tourists and the occasional A-list actor.
“We’re visited by lots of celebrities. Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, Alec Baldwin … I could name a bunch of others,” said Manatos. A second store, at PNC Plaza in downtown Pittsburgh, opened in 2016. Today, there are 11 company-owned locations and a newly launched franchise program in partnership with shared services and consulting firm Franworth.
President Dan Reese, who was a marketing executive at Kraft Heinz and ran its $2 billion condiments portfolio, said the “elevated, premium twist” Milkshake Factory puts on its products have helped it carve out a niche for itself while tapping into the “broad, universal appeal of milkshakes.”
“There’s an interesting white space out there—no one is doing exactly what we’re doing,” said Reese, who over the past three years has been working to polish the concept and prepare for expansion. Those efforts included paring down the menu from 55 flavors to about 20 and giving consumers the “illusion of complexity” while streamlining operations and layout in the back of the house.
“It used to be 12 kids behind the counter scooping ice cream. It was not a scalable model,” he said. Working with Director of Operations Shawn Smith, the two “took what was in my head and made it simple and replicable,” added Manatos. “And so that a 16-year-old can understand it and execute it in every store.”
There’s been plenty of give and take—“Dan says ‘cut’ and I say ‘no!’,” said Manatos, sounding very much like the founder she is—but all agree they won’t sacrifice quality, for example sourcing from Pennsylvania dairy farms and making the ice cream daily in each store.
“Our core is our quality. Our heritage and our quality,” said Manatos. “How my great-grandparents created recipes.”
As it rolls out its franchise program, Manatos said the Milkshake Factory’s demonstrated success in different settings and types of real estate mean the concept will translate outside the Pittsburgh market where, she added, “it’s very cold and we sell milkshakes year-round.” A location near a university campus is busy at 10:45 p.m., for example, while making the leap from downtown to suburban locations was “a very a-ha moment for us,” she said.
Milkshake Factory stores also sell the premium salted caramels, truffles and other treats made famous by the family’s earlier generations, providing additional revenue streams. “It’s hard to pass up the chocolate,” she said.