NoCo franchisees eyeing Boulder, Fort Collins for first Toppers Pizza shops
FORT COLLINS — Todd Geatches and Clayton Hartman have signed a franchise deal to open 13 Toppers Pizza shops in Colorado and Wyoming, including several in Northern Colorado and the Boulder Valley, with an option to open 14 additional stores south of Denver.
Geatches, who lives in Windsor, owns and operates three Taco John’s franchises in the area and operates six others for the Harold Holmes family through Mountain Restaurant Group LLC.
Hartman is the chief investment officer for IFAM Capital’s office in Fort Collins, and is a board member for Taco John’s International.
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Geatches and Hartman recently formed the entity Rocky Top Management Inc. through which they will operate Toppers.
Geatches said they plan to first open pizza shops in Fort Collins and Boulder and are in the processing of securing locations near Colorado State University in Fort Collins and the University of Colorado in Boulder, areas that meet key demographics for Toppers. He is also scouting for sites in Longmont, Brighton and Greeley, as well as Cheyenne and Laramie in Wyoming.
“Toppers focuses on the millennial group, which is now the gold standard for the food business,” Geatches said. He and Hartman plan to open the first 13 pizza shops in cities with a population of 20,000 or more that are north of C-470. The optional 14 pizza shops in Colorado primarily would be south of C-470 down to Pueblo, Geatches said.
“Our plan is to have 27 Toppers operating within the next seven years,” Geatches said.
Wisconsin-based Toppers owns 25 of its 74 pizza shops operating in 12 states. The company has doubled in size over the last three years. It has a plan to have 700 stores in the United States within 10 years, Cairns said.
In 2014, Entrepreneur Magazine ranked Toppers as one of the top 500 franchises in the United States, and QSR Magazine listed the company as one of the year’s Best Franchise Deals.
Toppers charges a franchise fee of $30,000 for first restaurant, $20,000 for the second and third restaurants, $15,000 for restaurants four and five, and $10,000 each after that. It also charges a 5.5 percent annual royalty fee.
Franchisees must pay tenant improvements to buildings, buy furniture, fixtures and equipment, and pay for internal training costs.
Geatches said after visiting 41 Toppers stores and talking with franchisees, general managers and hourly workers, he was sold on Toppers. “They have a phenomenal product and I was blown away about how well they treat workers.”
Geatches said he had considered affiliating with Marco’s Pizza and Papa John’s that are already established in Colorado, “But they didn’t offer the opportunity of expanding within a complete market.”
