Egg & I about to crack open 3 more franchise restaurants

FORT COLLINS – There’s nothing scrambled about the expansion path followed by the owners of the Egg & I restaurants.
Co-founder Rayno Seaser and his partners have practiced a philosophy of measured growth for the chain of breakfast-lunch eateries since the company started in Fort Collins in 1987.
So Seaser calls it coincidental that three new Egg & I restaurants are currently under development this fall.
As planned, the three restaurants – all Egg & I franchises – will be open by the spring. With the three additions, Egg & I will grow to 17 total restaurants, including 12 franchises and five company stores.
The first of the three new sites to open will be in Thornton, scheduled to start in December. A second will open in Arvada in January. The third, in Highlands Ranch, is targeted for a May 2005 opening.
The additions will double Egg & I’s presence in the Denver metro area.
“There is an emphasis to grow, but it’s just coincidental,” Seaser said of the three additions. “We’ve been working on these deals for a few months. So, it happened they just kind of stacked up.”
Eggceptional Concepts Inc., the parent company for Egg & I, plans for future expansion in the Denver market, as well as moving into adjacent states. Currently the only non-Colorado location is in Cheyenne, Wyo.
“We’d like to be the tortoise rather than the hare – we want slow and steady growth,” Seaser added.
As a breakfast-lunch only concept, the Egg & I operates in a somewhat mysterious niche of the restaurant world.
Competition comes primarily from the family restaurant chains like Perkins, Denny’s and International House of Pancakes. But even those chains feature dinner service and sometimes 24-hour operations.
“There are relatively few” restricted to breakfast-lunch, said Richard Martin, managing editor of Nation’s Restaurant News, a trade publication. And most operators in that category are independent operators.
“Typically those businesses might be located in more urban settings, in business districts and central city areas, where office buildings clear out after dark,” Martin said.
Egg & I has operated counter to that philosophy, finding staying power in more suburban settings, often mixed in with retail neighbors.
Martin, nevertheless, applauds the foundation of Egg & I as it looks to grow. It’s cluster of five company stores “would be reassuring signs of franchisees. You can point to good numbers and growth in terms of building a prototype or formula for new units.”
The morning “daypart,” which is determined as 6 a.m. to 11 a.m., is the smallest part of the restaurant market, representing about 11 percent of all restaurant sales, according to a recent report by Technomics, a market research company.
But that means the morning market may have “the greatest potential for future growth,” Technomics said.
Seaser said he wants to maintain a healthy ratio of company-owned restaurants and franchises
“I’d like to keep a balance of company stores and franchise stores,” he said. “I haven’t identified where we want that balance to be. We’re looking at a few locations now for additional stores – additional company stores.”
Seaser’s biggest challenge in the near term, he said, is keeping control of prices in the wake of Florida’s summer of crop-damaging hurricanes.
“It’s tough, particularly in our daypart (breakfast-lunch), because of what’s happening with citrus and produce,” he said. “We rely so much on fresh products – fresh-squeezed orange juice and all of our fresh-fruit garnishes. That particularly hurts our daypart more than it does the night time.”
Egg & I evaluates its menu and prices twice a year. Seaser won’t raise prices this fall, but will look again at the issue in May.

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