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BEANER'S COFFEE was founded in East Lansing, MI in 1995 by Bob Fish and Mary Roszel, when, on March 15, 1995, they first opened the doors to their new coffee shop, BEANER'S. The store quickly became the premiere gourmet coffee shop in the East Lansing area, standing apart from competitors by serving drinks of the highest quality quickly and efficiently in a atmosphere that customers found instantly inviting. These three qualities have remained central to the BEANER'S operating philosophy and have driven the success of BEANER'S in the years since. A second store opened in October of 1997 in Lansing, MI, one block from the Capitol Building, bringing the World's Best Coffee downtown. It remains one of the busiest stores in the company and a favorite meeting place for downtown professionals. The success of both stores led to a decision to begin franchising the BEANER'S brand, and in June of 1998, Global Orange Development, LLC, the franchisor for BEANER'S, was formed by Bob Fish, Mary Roszel, and Michael McFall. The first two franchises were signed early in the following year. The first franchise store opened on August 9, 1999 in Okemos, MI, quickly followed by a store opening in East Lansing on October 6, 1999. These openings established BEANER'S as the dominant gourmet coffee brand in the Lansing market, continually strengthened by the addition of nine more stores in that market over the following four years. The leap to opening out-of-market BEANER'S COFFEE stores was made in 2001. The first opened in Merrillville, IN on June 11, 2001, also the first franchise that was brought to Global Orange Development through the company's website. Three more out-of-market franchises were later opened in the Fall of 2001 in the Toledo, OH market. While BEANER'S was entering new markets, they were also bringing to a close a deal to acquire a six store gourmet coffee shop chain, Sufficient Grounds, also located in the Toledo market. On January 7, 2002, the purchase was finalized and the stores began converting into BEANER'S COFFEE stores over the course of 2002. The company doubled in size in 2002 with the acquisition of Sufficient Grounds coupled with additional Michigan franchise openings in Lansing, Okemos, Portage, Traverse City, and Grand Rapids, as well as the addition of a BEANER'S kiosk in the Toledo Express Airport. 2003 brought a landslide of company development following the franchising boom year of 2002. These developments touched nearly every aspect of company business; from training to operations, marketing to website development, vendor negotiations to customer relations, and more. The first few months of 2003 saw the opening of another Lansing area store, the first in that market to feature a drive through, followed by Global Orange Development moving its offices to downtown Lansing. The first franchise signing in the new office took place a week later on April 4, 2003. The second signing followed in July for a store in Mobile, Alabama, the first store to be signed outside of the Midwest. That summer signing was accompanied by the development and release of two new company manuals. The first, released in the beginning of July, was a new edition of the BEANER'S COFFEE Operations Manual. The 270 page manual updates the original edition from 1999 and contains everything an owner/operator needs to know about running a successful BEANER'S store. The second manual released in 2003, the New Barista Training Manual, was presented to franchisees in the fall of that year. The NBT Manual introduced a new format from the previous edition including educational games, newly enhanced visual aids, and workbook sections that center on self-directed learning. 2003 also brought BEANER'S COFFEE's merchandising poster program into full swing with the introduction of new display equipment for the posters combined with stepping up the production schedule on the posters themselves. The new display equipment provided an attractive, eye-grabbing venue for the colorful and clever poster designs, which, when combined with BEANER'S renewed attention to holiday promotions, including special drinks, cookies, and merchandise unique to each different holiday, and complimented by the implementation of system wide promotion rollouts, brought a new power and focus to the BEANER'S in-store merchandising efforts. The new poster program was first introduced at the Quarterly Franchisee Meeting in March of 2003, the first of four QFM's held last year, which also marked the first full year of that meeting being held. The Quarterly Franchisee Meeting is held once every three months and brings together the owners and/or managers from every store in the company. The meeting is a day-long event where new products and procedures are introduced, promotional rollouts are planned, and feedback is collected from the franchisees on what areas they would like to see development in. The meetings are enormously productive and help to coordinate the franchisees as BEANER'S continues to rapidly expand. It was also at a Quarterly Franchise Meeting in October of 2003 where announcements were made to the franchisees about the significant gains that had been made with vendor price negotiations in the previous quarter. Further gains were made in the months following the meeting as well. Significant price reductions or franchise rebates were secured for Bareman's Milk, Oregon Chai, Monin Syrups, as well as with Sysco for the price of the BEANER'S branded cups. In addition to these negotiated price cuts, further savings were brought to the franchisees with Sysco's online ordering, where participating stores were able to shave 2% off their total order cost. Further development occurred in the BEANER'S online world in November with the launch of a new email marketing program, whose roots were in the new focus that was brought to the Customer Database early in 2003. The Customer Database is comprised customer records taken from the information on the back of the frequency cards customers have submitted, dating back to 1995 when the first store opened. Under new direction from then-Marketing Administrator Jeremy DeRuiter, the eight year old database doubled in size in 2003, lending many new names and email addresses to the email campaign that began in November of that year. The email marketing campaign has brought a new level of sophistication to BEANER'S COFFEE's marketing program, allowing communication with customers that can be personalized and features promotions and images that tie in directly to the in-store poster merchandising program, leaving a deeper impression on the consumer. The same software has also been used to email customers a quarterly Guest Services Survey, formerly distributed on postcards, which has garnered the attention of the email marketing community due to the fantastic response rate that BEANER'S has received from its customers. Following just two months after the launch of the email marketing program, BEANER'S made another leap forward with the release of a redesigned online store, featuring customer accounts, a shopping cart interface, and an expanded product line, as well as shortly thereafter, the launch of the Franchisee Resource Center, a password-protected area of the website with a dual purpose. Current franchisees are able to access it to retrieve the latest company wide reports and other useful documents, while potential franchisees are given access to the FRC to view information not available on the public area of the website. The first half of 2004 has seen continued development on the website, with the launch of a completely redesigned website, adding new features such as an animated intro on the home page, a Featured at BEANER'S section on the homepage that will tie into the email and poster programs, as well as store galleries in the franchise section. 2004 also seems to be building momentum towards another boom year in franchising for BEANER'S COFFEE as inquiries are up 446%, with two Spring franchise signings, more in the works, and current franchisees who plan on opening additional units later this year. 2005 started with a new store opening in a new area for BEANER'S, the Detroit metro area. This store opening set the pace for the first half of the year. Four more stores were opened in the first five months. BEANER'S broke out of the Midwest with a new location in southern Alabama. The South welcomed BEANER'S and three more locations are set to open at the beginning of next year. With the addition of stores came the addition of people. BEANER'S added four new positions and five new employees to its corporate office: Tony Ziegler, Director of Franchise Development; Tony DiPietro, Director of Operations; Jobi Schaeffer, Information Technology Administrator; Kori Lawlor, Marketing and Promotions Assistant; and Cathy Haworth, Office Manager/Accounting Clerk. These new positions caused an eruption of new programs. Discovery Day, a day long presentation and tour of BEANER'S and Paramount Coffee, is available every other Monday of each month for potential franchisees. A Secret Shopper program has also been implemented to test stores' customer service. A Customer Service Index has been created to test the overall quality of each store. The Index incorporates the scores of a secret shopper, a customer survey, and a store inspection. These three elements provide a reliable score that can be used to judge if improvements need to be made to a store. As the tempo of franchising reaches an all time high, the training department has been working overtime. New editions have been released for the New Barista Training manual, workbook, and exam, as well as for the PERColator Playbook, the guide store trainers use to conduct the New Barista Training program. The Training Department has also begun working with the initial staff of new stores, sparing no expense to guarantee that the staff is fully prepared for their Grand Opening. Meanwhile, a new program is being developed to further intensify the On the Job Training component of New Franchisee Training, and this, when coupled with the development of a new Manager in Training