Huddle House hires development chief to guide growth

Nov. 1, 2010

Southern comfort food mainstay Huddle House has continued to grow despite the down
economy and, to facilitate this upward mobility, added a new Chief Development Officer,
according to the San Francisco Gate.

Mark Whittle, former vice president of real estate for Focus Brands, brings more than 20
years of related restaurant-industry experience to this position at Huddle House. Aside
from Focus Brands, his vast career expertise includes stints at Church’s Chicken, Little
Caesars and Krystal.

“Mark Whittle has the exact experience, vision and passion necessary to take Huddle
House to the next level and spark a new altitude of growth,” said Chief Executive Officer
Ken Keymer in a statement. “After the recent launch of our new exterior model and
connection to a wider demographic, Whittle will be a key factor in ramping up the
development of our brand both internally and externally.”

At Atlanta-based Huddle House, Whittle will be responsible for all areas of growth as a
key leader of the franchise sales team. He’ll also focus specifically on brand
development, franchise sales, recruitment, construction and continuing to update the
Huddle House model.

“I’m looking forward to incorporating new characteristics into the Huddle House brand to
convey a more contemporary message while still emphasizing the values that
differentiate us from our competitors,” Whittle said in a company release.

Huddle House Inc. boasts more than 400 full-service family diners, located in 17 U.S.
states, predominantly in the Southeast, Midwest and Southwest regions. The 46-year-
old franchise is typically open 24 hours per day, and serves up omelets, lunch platters,
steaks, salads and more.

Whittle’s direct responsibilities and the primary focus of his new role will fall under
franchise sales efforts, he told DailyVista, adding that he’ll bring a welcome and added
discipline to Huddle House’s real estate strategy to grow the brand on a market-by-
market basis and through specific site selection.

Another aspect of his role encompasses oversight of construction and of architectural

design of each franchise. He’ll also be part of the Huddle House executive team, with an
eye toward getting the company back to where it was and pushing for even greater
success moving forward.

“I’d love to see us get back on the track of opening 35 to 40 stores per year,” Whittle
said. “When I accepted the position I wasn’t even aware of the pipeline – I had hoped we
could get 15 to 20 open this year, and we’ve already opened six, with four scheduled in
November – so 15 will be pretty easy, and we could even stretch that to 20. I‘d like to
see us ramp up to 10 to 15 percent or higher growth rate beyond that.”

Whittle’s experience, especially with Focus Brands, has taught him that the brand is only
as good as the restaurants it opens. He said that so much of each franchise’s success is
attributed to site selection, how much parking is available, its visibility in the marketplace
and how well the brand is received among consumers.

For now, these goals have solely been publicized internally among Huddle House
employees. Our source said that the company is looking at how it can do things
differently, and areas that need improvement.

“We’ve been working on this new millennium design – it’s an improved new 21st century
look for the brand and that’s going to be a game-changer,” he said. “It takes the look of
the store, the restaurant, the new signage elements, the color schemes. It’s totally fresh,
and will help not just with franchise sales efforts, but also with consumer as we ramp up
getting restaurants with that new look and getting stores remodeled over the next 18 to
24 months.”

According to Whittle, Huddle House has accomplished about 95 percent of its goals, and
is setting a strategic growth plan for the brand, which he was brought on board to lead.
He initially hopes to backfill the areas where Huddle Houses are prominent fixtures –
states like Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina.

“We’re also trying to put a focus on redevelopment efforts,” our source said. “During the
last two to three years with the slow down, we have a number of restaurants close that
we think are still viable and have great potential. We want to put an effort behind getting
those stores reopened. We think there are probably 20 to 30 of those opportunities that if
we put an emphasis behind it, we can get them reopened in the next 12 months – that’ll
help with our growth plans tremendously.”

Huddle House’s typical B-to-C marketing efforts primarily consist of print ads. Our source
said that it doesn’t make financial sense to put ad dollars towards broad television spots
or anything to grandiose, but rather, the company opts to use ADVO drops and direct
mail pieces to get the word out in each neighborhood about a particular franchise.

“We’ll be increasing that next year and increasing the amount of print we’re doing around
the restaurants and helping to drive traffic,” Whittle said. “Because of being so spread
out, again it goes back to efficiency, we don’t have enough concentration of stores
where it’s cost-effective to buy television.”

This goes without saying that social media has become a very important cost-effective
way to advertise Huddle House to consumers in smaller towns, which is where the brand
seems to do best, though our source concedes that the new architectural design and
store look may present a different venue to begin moving into more metropolitan areas.

“I would say that we’ve got a lot of area to improve in those specific realms for social
media. They’re doing some eClub type things to capture e-mails from customers on the
B-to-C side – it’s a powerful tool at the store level,” he said. “From a franchise sales
perspective I’m just getting into tools and methods. We’ll look at what we’ve been doing
and continue to do the things we’ve been doing and looking at alternatives.”
Our source smartly remarked that a company can pour a lot of money in franchise sales
marketing and find that they’re throwing the money down the drain if there aren’t any
leads. Whittle said that with social media, there’s certainly more opportunity not only on
the B-to-C side, but also to entice prospective franchisees to consider purchasing a
location.

“We’ll be on the peripheral of big cities… our demographic and our marketing research is
kind of middle to lower middle income and skews a bit more on the male side and a little
older, but not to say that we don’t get females in the restaurant or younger, it just skews
towards that – the same as a small town.”

The real estate development team will work hand-in-hand with the company’s marketing
department, and Vice President of Marketing Susan Frank, more specifically, to help
with public relations, franchise marketing and developing the tools each location needs.

Whittle confirmed that Chicago-based No Limit Media Consulting currently handles

Huddle House’s public relations initiatives, adding that he’s not in a position to make any
big changes as far as agency relationships go, seeing as he’s five days into the job.

“I think that we’ll take a look at what we’ve been doing and try to pick up things we
haven’t been doing and leverage the best practices from the groups’ combined
knowledge, including mine,” he said. “I can bring the experience of other brands – what
we did right and what we did wrong, what we wasted money on from a franchise sales
perspective – and talking it through with the team, we can identify those areas we should
be spending dollars on.”

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