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Sweet Success
Successful Franchising Magazine
She was $50,000 in debt and working out of her garage when Little Rock mom Margaret McEntire decided to give her Candy Bouquet business a second try in 1989.
Less than a decade later, McEntire has landed on the cover of Successful Franchising as an example of how to run a business. "Everybody thought I was nuts," McEntire says of starting over. McEntire first started making gift bouquets of candy instead of flowers for friends in the 1980s.
The bouquets were so popular, McEntire and a friend started a Candy Bouquet business with a shop in Houston. When the friend suddenly left Houston, McEntire didn't want to move to the city to oversee day-to-day operations. She lost the startup money but not her determination. She headed back to the garage.
"Jay McEntire, my sweet husband, stood behind me," she says. "He said, You know this is going to be on every street corner one day."
Now, she has more than 770 franchise territories in 18 countries. McEntire's approach isn't complicated. She insists on personally talking with each prospective franchisee. She tells them, "If you're good with a customer, it always comes back to you."
If a customer orders a dozen candy roses, McEntire includes 13. Always exceed expectations, she tells franchisees. And, she says, "If you get greedy in anything in life, you lose. That's on the first page of our handbook."
Fun is also at the top of her list. McEntire finds that many of her franchisees are looking for just that. One franchisee opened her business for fun after winning $17 million in the Florida state lottery. "You can only clean your house so many times," she told McEntire.
Common sense makes good business sense for McEntire. College students run her warehouse. If they work 15 hours a week and maintain a 3.0 grade-point average, McEntire pays their tuition. "They bust it back there," McEntire says. "They want to do for us because we do for them."
McEntire's strategies have worked for one important reason. "I'm just persistent as all get-out," she says. "I wasn't going to give up on it no matter what."
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