February 2014
| Business World Magazine | 69
I
f nothing else, Michael McFall and
his cohorts at Biggby Coffee can
take a hint.
Though the business launched in 1995
with a simple plan that involved build-
ing coffee shops and expanding within
the everyday constraints of margins and
revenue, it was soon apparent that out-
side demand for a piece of that concept
exceeded the anticipated supply.
“We had two stores and we started to
get phone calls – a material number of
phone calls – saying ‘Are you guys fran-
chising? If so, I’d love to talk to you,’”
says McFall, the company’s president.
“We were getting enough of these
calls that we ended up settling on the
idea that this would be a nice avenue, a
nice method to grow.”
Biggby did that from the time it be-
gan franchising in 1999 through 2006,
by which time its corporate footprint
stretched well past its single-store be-
ginnings in Lansing and East Lansing,
