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Photos by Brandi Simons
special FO
FOODSERVICE
OODSSERVICCE section
A Tale of Two
Breakfast Programs
By Abbey Lewis
[email protected]
SMALL OPERATOR ZIGEEZ
REAPS BIG PROFITS WITH
FRESH-MADE MEALS
2:30 a.m.
Alarm sounds, rousing Brad and Sandy Robertson. Sky
is still dark and the chirps of morning cardinals and orioles
are yet hours away.
But Brad and Sandy (above) have no choice, especially
as sole owners of Zigeez convenience store, a nifty singlestore hangout in Bristow, Okla. In just a half-hour, the couple will open the doors and prep breakfast for a ravenous
morning rush.
Everything’s hot and yummy: the sweet aroma of toasty
biscuits, made-to-order eggs and breakfast burritos. All
from scratch.
“From the time we open that door at 3 in the morning,
it doesn’t stop,” Brad says. “I’ve had people tell me, ‘You
know, Zigee, I want to stop to eat, but sometimes you’re so
busy I can’t find a place to park.’ Sometimes, between customers you’re waiting on inside and the drive-thru window,
you’re just running like crazy.”
Amid the bustle, the Robertsons draw aid from two other
cooks. And as soon as the breakfast rush ebbs, the thought
of lunch kicks in.
Life could be easier with prepackaged or thaw-andserve. But not for Zigeez. “It takes a lot of labor,” Brad
says. “Everybody else is just buying [premade food] off
the truck and heating it up and sticking it out there. We
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“Everybody else is just
buying [premade
food] off the truck and
heating it up and
sticking it out there.
We didn’t want to
do that.”
didn’t want to do that.
“We’re a small store—really small—
with not that big of a kitchen. But we
have different things they can’t get from STAY FRESH: Zigeez promotes its fresh specials daily. An employee gets on the phone every
anyone else.” The store also carries c- morning with local businesses to promote the lineup as well.
store staples such as soda, beer, cigarettes and other convenience items.
Despite the extra manpower and food-from-scratch
approach, Zigeez keeps prices low, charging $1.40 to $1.80
for breakfast sandwiches, for example. Brad says he operates
on a 40% margin on everything he sells. “We do pay our people good, too,” he says. “But the numbers we run kind of
cover [all the costs]. We could do better if we went the [premade] way, more money in my pocket. But you know? We
make a good living, and I’m not hurting for anything.”
Spoilage isn’t much of a concern either. What little he has
left after a rush comes through, Brad freezes to use for something else. Because Zigeez operates its foodservice program
around the clock, what didn’t get used at breakfast gets used
at lunch, or even for the next morning’s rush.
“If we don’t sell out, it’s always something that I can reuse,”
he says. “I can freeze it and reuse it for a different special, or
something like that. Basically, I kind of know on a rough scale
what we’re going to sell for a day. Most of the time we sell
out. Very seldom do I ever have anything left over.”
Zigeez employs nine, not counting Brad and Sandy. Four
are cooks. The space is modest, with only 1,300 square feet,
including a small kitchen. So it’s no surprise that Zigeez is ZIG IN, ZIG OUT: A kitchen employee assembles the c-store’s fresh
looking to expand. If they can make it work, Brad says they’ll breakfast sandwiches just in time for the morning rush.
add a dinner menu as well, perhaps one that will give his working site, reveals a group created by local high school
small-town patrons a place to sit down and have a steak.
students to sing the convenience store’s praises: It’s called
“We keep talking; we’d like to add on to the store, make a “Zigeez is the bomb …”
bigger eating area to separate it from the inside of the store to
“They all come here, which sometimes makes it rough
give people more privacy,” Brad says. “Our main problem in for my other customers that want to come in, and they have
adding on is the parking area—we don’t have that space.”
to wait until they leave,” Brad says.
The store’s food, and breakfast in particular, is very popThe town of Bristow is about 70 miles northeast of Oklaular among the small town’s high school students. A quick homa City, and about 33 from Tulsa. Zigeez donates much
search on Facebook, the widely used online social-net- of what the company earns to various community programs:
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“My accountant keeps telling me that I’m giving away more
money than I’m making. I say, ‘Well, God must be keeping us
afloat, then, because we still have enough to pay the bills.’ ”
Admittedly, the store’s success is due in part to the lack of
options in the approximately 4,400-person town, and Brad
and Sandy repay their patrons’ generosity by participating
heavily in children’s sporting programs and other events,
in addition to their 12- to 14-hour days at the store.
“When you’re up against seven other stores in a small
community, it’s scratch and pull,” Brad says. “I have a competitor right next to me. You have to do everything you can
do to stand out against the next guy. People see me volunteer, and they see me working from morning to night.
“Do we get tired? Yes. Do we get a little burnt out? Yeah.
We just have to rejuvenate ourselves somehow, and some
way we do.”
PREMADE SANDWICHES
PRACTICALLY PERFECT
FOR ENGLEFIELD OIL
ike Zigeez, Heath, Ohio-based Englefield Oil Co.
used to produce its line of breakfast sandwiches
in-house. But the company wasn’t having a lot of
success. As breakfast became a more popular on-the-go
meal, Judy Dudte, food concepts division manager for
Englefield, saw the need to make a change.
Originally, the company’s 58 deli stores
“We weren’t doing well
would purchase scramon breakfast, period.
bled-egg rounds, bacon
And so this was a real
strips and sausage patties
and make their own
shot in the arm for
combinations in each
getting our breakfast
store. The three breakfastup to par.”
sandwich options would
be wrapped and placed in
the deli case, where they could sit for the length of their
PREMADE PRIDE: Food concepts division manager Judy Dudte
seven-day shelf life.
(left) and store manager Marsha Seward of Englefield Oil stand next
“We weren’t having a lot of success with that,” Dudte
to a Sara Lee branded sandwich display. “We put them in the
says. “A lot of stores didn’t even bother making them anywarmer cart right up front so you trip over them to buy them,” Dudte
more because they just weren’t selling—they were spoiling
says. “You can smell them if you’re standing right beside them. The
out more than they were selling.”
impulse factor: It’s a good thing.”
Englefield decided to try the Jimmy Dean Butcher Wrapped
breakfast-sandwich line from Sara Lee, Downers Grove, Ill.
The company began testing the products at 10 of its stores two
“We did sampling. Sara Lee gave us one free case of each
years ago. According to Dudte, it was apparent right away that type and we sampled them out to customers [at the first 10
the sandwiches were a “big success.” The company spread the stores],” she says. “Really, I don’t even know that the samprogram out to the rest of the stores over the next few months. pling would have been necessary.”
L
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Premade vs.
Fresh-Made
Fresh-Made
Pro:
Higher perceived quality
More variety
High customer satisfaction
Con:
Potential for waste
Labor-intensive
Higher potential expense
Premade
Pro:
Reduced labor
Reduced waste
High customer satisfaction
Con:
Lower perceived quality
No custom orders
Less control over price
COLORFUL CHOICE: Englefield’s bright packaging helps customers determine which variety
of breakfast sandwich they’d like to purchase.
The sandwiches, of which there are 13 varieties, started
out at $1.99. Englefield Oil carries five of them: sausage and
egg pancake sandwich with maple syrup; bacon, egg and
cheese biscuit; sausage, egg and cheese croissant; ham, egg
and cheese muffin; and French toast and sausage sandwich.
The price rose to $2.29 and recently to $2.49, which Dudte
says is due to a wholesale price increase. At the time this article was written, Dudte’s Sara Lee representative was working with Englefield’s distributor to get the price back down
to $2.29. With 40% margins, Dudte says, “We are doing very
good business on these sandwiches,” selling an average of
12 to 24 sandwiches per store per day.
“It is so much easier for the employee to grab the sandwich out of the freezer and let it thaw out in the cooler, and
then put it in the deli case,” she says. “They don’t have to
assemble anything. In this industry, the easier the better.
That is a big factor [behind their success].”
The sandwiches also last longer. They have a 14-day shelf
life, “so I have twice as long to sell them,” she says.
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Another key to the products success is the packaging: “It’s
just so bright and colorful,” she says. “When you carry the
whole line, you have every color in your deli case. It really
brightened up the deli case.”
Indeed, when Englefield was pressed by one of Sara Lee’s
competitors to try its breakfast sandwich, the colorful Jimmy
Dean option won out. The company tried the sandwiches
side-by-side in the warmer cart, and the other sandwiches
“didn’t compete,” Dudte says.
“The product itself is just so good. I think that once we
tried it, we knew that we had a good quality product that
can bring customers back. We do see the same people every
morning. I’m sure [the percentage of return customers] is
very high,” she says. “It’s no longer enough to get your customers back in there every day. We’re now trying to get them
in there two to three times a day.
“Breakfast is where we were lacking—we weren’t doing
well on breakfast, period. And so this was a real shot in the
■
arm for getting our breakfast up to par.”