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Zoup! co-owner Eric Ersher delivers an order to a customer. Ersher says he's interested in controlled growth of the company, with his sights set on the Midwest for now.Local spotlight
Zoup! grows in steady steps
Southfield soup chain touts controlled growth, will launch 3 new Ohio stores.
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SOUTHFIELD -- Zoup! Fresh Soup Company, headquartered in Southfield, will dip its toes in waters outside the Great Lakes State when it opens three new franchises in Ohio over the next couple of months. The quick-casual restaurant that specializes in soup, salads and sandwiches, has nine locations in Michigan.
But at the mention of "going national," owner Eric Ersher is quick to say, "We're still just a little Michigan company."
Although Ersher and co-owner David Elias opened their first restaurant in 1998 with future multiple locations in mind, controlled growth is their plan.
Their second location was opened a year and half later, and franchising started two years ago. "We want to be able to control our growth so that we can appropriately support our franchisees and our brand," says Ersher.
Ersher says it will limit its growth in the foreseeable future to the Midwest and in the immediate future to Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. Ersher says it costs between $230,000 to $398,000 to open a Zoup! franchise, and average store sales are $750,000 a year.
Though hesitant to claim national status yet, the Zoup! owners are enjoying the national recognition as one of Nation's Restaurant News (NRN) "Hot Concepts Award" winners.
Carolyn Walkup, Midwest editor of NRN, a national food service trade publication with a paid circulation of 80,000, says she discovered Zoup! on one of her field trips. "I thought they had an interesting, different kind of concept. They were not doing the same thing everyone else is doing. They seemed to be well-organized businesswise."
Zoup! caters mostly to the white-collar lunch crowd, with locations in or near densely populated office buildings. Ersher says while Zoup! gets a decent dinner turnout, 70 percent of its business is lunch, which is split pretty evenly between eat-in and take-out.
Walkup says ease of takeout Zoup! was another factor in its Hot Concepts win. "They have a big takeout business and they make that very convenient. People are always looking for convenience, so they can e-mail in or fax in their orders." Zoup! offers a daily e-mail with a list of the 12 soups (rotated daily from a roster of hundreds) and a link to order online.
Zoup! is further ingratiating itself with the office crowd with its new CaterZoup!, its group-size orders for working lunches and other office events.
Ersher says the Zoup! concept took off from day one, when office workers lined up at its first site in Franklin Plaza.
"It's comfort food," says Jerry McVety, food service industry consultant, McVety & Associates of Farmington Hills. "Many of us grew up in the era of Campbell's. Campbell's is still around, but like everything else there is a higher level of sophistication and diversity, and I think they've tapped into that with what I think is a great variety of specialized soups."
Ersher says when he and Elias set out to make soup the focus of the restaurant, they felt they were pioneers. There were a handful of predecessors to the concept like the trendy Cafe Zuppa in Hamtramck, and new small upstarts like Le Soups in Ferndale, but none concentrating on the office lunch crowd.
"Our BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) is to create and lead the soup-differentiated concept of quick casual," says Ersher. "If you look at quick casual restaurant operators you will find Mexican and sandwich, bakery cafe and pasta and noodle shops. But soup isn't even a cluster in quick-casual. One of the reasons it resonates is it is different."
The biggest challenge facing Zoup!, says Ersher, is controlling growth. "It relates to evolving our business structure to continue to provide support to store managers and franchisees as we continue to grow fast."
Kristin Franklin, a landscape designer in Oak Park, says soup is her first lunch choice. "Every day that the secretary (at work) asks me what I want for lunch, everyday I say 'soup.' I just love it. It's fast food, but way, way healthier than McDonald's."
Franklin, who is on the road daily, says there's downside to her favorite lunch: "It's hard to eat, obviously, in the car."
Christine Snyder is a Metro Detroit freelance writer.
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