“A bad brand reputation or product can be terminal for a company.”
— Scott Snyder
BACKGROUND
• Became interim CEO of Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii in 2018 and “fell in love” with it.
• Acquired the 25-unit brand in 2019 with investment from Royal Aloha Coffee Company.
Assistant Editor Callie Evergreen asks what makes emerging brand leaders tick—and presents their edited answers in this column in each issue. To suggest a subject, email cevergreen@franchisetimes.com.
How did Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii get its name?
In the Kona coffee growing district of the Big Island, back in the early days of coffee farming on Hawaii, they used donkeys because of their reliability and sure-footedness going up and down the steep and rocky slopes of the sides of a volcano to harvest the coffee and bring it down. The donkeys were amazing. They were stubborn but reliable, cantankerous, and they made a lot of noise. The indigenous people of the island would hear them going up and down bellowing and would call them the bad ass ones—asses being more of the biblical reference to donkeys.
What did you learn when you consulted with the company in 2017?
By early 2018, my consulting engagement had changed from helping them understand why they hadn’t sold a franchise in 10 years to filling in as an interim CEO of the company. It was during that time that I recognized what I viewed to be a bit of a sleeping giant. With the help of the previous owner, I was given access to the data and financials.
As a business manager and marketing guy, I always look for three legs of the stool that help to determine success of a company. Is the brand memorable, lovable, catchy? It has to be something unique. With a name like Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii, that box was definitely checked. Second leg: is the product any good? Is it craveable and something people will go out of their way for that’s unique in the marketplace? We’re not exclusively 100 percent Hawaiian coffee, but it’s our specialty and it’s a premium product that is excellent. Third leg: does the company have the infrastructure, people, processes, technology, systems and innovation that support the business and provide predictable, repeatable success?
Why acquire the company?
Of those three legs, Bad Ass Coffee had the first two in spades, but that third one as a franchise company they were really lacking. There hadn’t been a lot of investment in infrastructure, which was reflected in the performance of the stores at the time. A bad brand reputation or product can be terminal for a company. But if you’ve got a lack of infrastructure, it’s expensive and time consuming, but you simply have to populate that main street with all the things that are going to contribute to success. I saw this sleeping giant that had two legs of the stool that were the hardest to build.
You’ve worked with big franchises such as McDonald’s and Jimmy John’s. Why are you excited to grow Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii?
Rarely do most people get the opportunity we had here, which is if you have a brand that meets those two checkboxes and you could wipe the slate clean on everything else and build the perfect franchise system or coffee brand because you have no sacred cows or allegiance, what would you build? Would you follow best practices? Look for opportunities and gaps in another marketplace? That’s what’s so exciting. We have a chance to start with a blank canvas as far as infrastructure, and the vision is, how do we build a brand that puts franchisees first?