Small Business Opportunities | SYOB | Fall 2007

Harold Tramazzo calls it a “fluke.” In the summer of 1999, Tramazzo was on the phone with his friend, Patrick Daly. Both were restaurant industry veterans who had worked together at a national casual dining chain before going their separate ways to work for regional chains. They had talked about going into business for themselves, they reflected.

On the day they talked, each had a lousy day at work. It was the kind of day where you feel like quitting and going off and doing your own thing. So, that’s exactly what Tramazzo and Daly did. It was a big day.

“During that call, we both decided to quit our jobs and open our own place,” Tramazzo recalled. “We saw an opportunity. Eight years later, it’s still proving to be a strong one.”

On Sept. 1, 1999, Tramazzo and Daly went into business together with the idea of delivering high-quality, yet simple food at a reasonable cost to students at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. They chose chicken wings – both boneless and traditional – and haven’t looked back since as the popularity and American appetite for wings seems unquenchable.

“Wings” as they called it, was simple, offering only delivery and takeout. But it was an overwhelming success. Customers loved the premium tenderloin boneless chicken wings that were never frozen, hand-battered and sold by weight, not by the piece. Ditto for the traditional jumbo chicken wings that were lightly breaded and the largest and meatiest available, in what today includes 22 different flavors. Everything was cooked to order.

“Wings Over” as the concept is known today, has grown to 18 franchised and four corporate-owned locations in Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia. Franchising began in January 2002. Biz is booming.

Plans call for the opening of five new franchised locations in 2007. The chain is hoping to average about one store opening per month in the coming years, giving it approximately 60 locations by the end of 2010.

Wings Over is recognized as “the Home of the Wing Professionals” and that fact is emphasized with its unique name. Wings Over incorporates the city or region wherever it opens a location into its name. That’s why there is “Wings Over Happy Valley” in State College, Pa., near Penn State University and “Wings Over Brookline” in the town outside Boston, says Wings Over.

“The names not only show that we’re part of the community, but that we have the reputation for being the place to go for the best wings in that area,” said Wings Over President Mark D. Simonds, another restaurant industry veteran who joined Daly and Tramazzo in 2001. Simonds ran his own Wings Over in Storrs, Conn., as all three perfected the concept to make it suitable for franchising.

While chicken wings have become a staple of most every menu in the country, it is the solid, simplistic philosophy behind Wings Over that has made it a success in every market it enters. Customers have only two options: pick-up or delivery, and Wings Over does not treat delivery as a side business, but as its main focus. What customers get are hot, fresh, delicious wings in a timely manner with each and every order.

The results are beyond impressive. With its 1,700 square-foot stores located primarily in high-traffic, high-exposure strip malls, average gross sales at Wings Over locations in 2005 was $1.2 million. What makes that figure even more eye-catching is the moderate investment cost of a Wings Over unit: $156,200 to $338,000.

Wings Over offers one of the most comprehensive training programs in franchising with combination classroom and hands-on instruction provided during a 30-day program at the Wings Over corporate-operated store and training center in Springfield, Mass. More than 80 percent of the instruction is done in a hands-on environment.

Afterward, 10 days of onsite training and assistance – including training of hourly employees – is provided at the franchisee’s location.

“It comes down to how we train our franchisees to operate their stores and the mindset they have when they leave our training program,” Simonds said. “To us, there is no unobtainable number when talking about store sales. We are not just selling our franchisees a job, we are selling them a business.”

Growth is expected to come from a combination of single-unit operators and area developers. Not surprisingly, all current Wings Over franchisees have either opened or plan to open additional locations, with the largest having 15-store development agreements. The Wings Over growth goal of opening one store each month is reasonable and not gaudy by design.

“We want to make sure that if the need arises, we can physically be at one of our franchisees’ stores at the drop of a hat,” Simonds said. “Slow and sure is definitely the mindset we have in regards to our growth.”

When they launched the original “Wings” in 1999, Daly and Tramazzo sought to take advantage of the growing popularity of chicken wings, a rapidly growing demand for prompt, customer-friendly home delivery and inferior chicken wing offerings from competitors such as pizza chains. Those factors still fuel the success of Wings Over today.

About 60 percent of business comes from deliveries. At some locations, the figure is as high as 90 percent. Deliveries are completed in less than 35 minutes, generally within a five-mile radius. And while chicken wings have seemingly become the hot menu item du jour for pizza chains, Simonds fluffs off any notion that they or anyone else offers competition for Wings Over.

“We generally dominate those guys,” Simonds said. “If you’re in a market filled with pizza delivery places, we’re the guys people call for wings because our product is fresh and we have a variety of flavors. Competitors can’t compete with us on quality. You can’t make great wings in a pizza oven.”

Wings Over maintains a successful delivery system due to a detailed POS system that tracks such particulars as average out-the-door time, average delivery time per run, number of deliveries per run, average time drivers spend inside the store and average sales amount delivered per hour by each driver. On a typical Friday night, a Wings Over staffs seven delivery drivers.

“A lot of places claim to offer delivery, but sometimes that means having one driver on a Friday night,” Simonds said. “I like to say that if you have a restaurant with 100 seats in it, you can only fit 100 people. But if you pay attention to doing delivery right, you have 100,000 seats.”

Wings Over has attracted franchisees from a wide variety of backgrounds, from those with previous restaurant experience to accountants and IT professionals. Simonds predicts the chain will expand to the West Coast by the end of 2007 and sees the company’s momentum continuing to build.

“This is truly a ground-floor opportunity,” Simonds said. “Everyone is looking at the wing market and saying, ‘This could be the next market that follows pizza.’ Plus, you don’t have a competitor every quarter-mile. We offer franchisees a very streamlined, simple-to-operate concept. I think it’s a huge advantage.”

According to Wings Over, “The secret to our success is the dedication of our employees to sue our systems theright way the first time, every time. Combine this with our never ending pursuit of only fresh, made to order Wings Over products, makes us the only option when ordering any flavor boneless wing or jumbo wings. In addition to our chicken products we offer only the best St. Louis style ribs in a variety of flavors, fried or broiled chicken sandwiches or wraps and some of the besthamburgers you can get your hands on. Along with our main items we also offer great sides.”•

FLYING HIGH

Explosive growth: Wings Over to triple in size by 2010!