Ep126- Advice from a Franchise Extraordinaire - Greg Sausaman of Topper's Creamery

The Food Startups Podcast

“And I asked him: Why are you doing this? Your grandchildren won't have to work..” -Greg to his co-founder Wade who owns more than 50 Papa John's pizza franchises.

Greg Sausaman has worked in food since the 1980's. By the time he was 30 years old, he owned eight Domino's pizza locations. Then he transitioned to Allied Domecq, one of the largest food/liquor conglomerates in the world.

Now he is cofounder of Topper's Creamery, a custard franchise currently in Florida.

Upon the company’s inception, Sausaman fully designed an entire new brand; image, operational flow, menu, pricing strategy, training processes, and financial. AND he undertook full strategic and tactical plans for this new brand.

I had a great time speaking with Greg. He talks about the long term mindset, what he would have done differently, how to manage people and much more:

• The transition from entrepreneur to employee
• On choosing retail locations
• The question he asks employees that has made a huge difference
• Creating a legacy company
• Baby boomer vs Millennial definition of "long-term"
• Developing an award-winning custard recipe
• All about vanilla
• Cobranding vs Multibranding
• Lessons learned from mistakes
• How they incentivize their employees for high performance and long-term commitment