How Toastique Helps Owners with Marketing & Introducing Our Newest Franchise Owners!
When potential entrepreneurs think of joining a restaurant franchise, one of the last tasks they often think they’ll spend their time doing is marketing. However, this aspect of running a business can easily make or break a business – but don’t worry, you won’t be left to your own devices with your marketing efforts when you make the decision to introduce Toastique to your community.
Regardless of how much experience you have with marketing now, know that you’ll have a team of experienced marketers at your back to help you learn how to promote your new business before and well after launch! So, let’s take a look at what kind of marketing support our franchisor team provides to our franchisees and meet the latest pair of Franchise Owners to join us – neither of which specialized in marketing but are still confident their Toastique Gourmet Toast & Juice Bar will thrive in their Pittsburgh neighborhood!
How Toastique Supports Owners with Their Marketing Needs
Your Initial Onboarding & Training
After you officially sign on to become our newest Franchise Owner, one of your first tasks, in addition to finding the perfect location, will be to jump into our onboarding process and training courses. Our initial 2-week training program consists of 18 hours in a classroom and 174 hours of on-the-job training at one of our Washington, D.C. locations, as well as on-site at your location. During this time, you’ll learn about all the day-to-day things, like recipes, ingredients, inventory, management, employee training, and more. However, you’ll also be guided through your other high-level duties, including grand opening assistance and ordering, in addition to marketing.
Our Organic Social Media Presence
Our business model first generated over $1 million in sales in our first year of operation without any professional marketing, not just because our healthy breakfast menu is delicious and good for you but because of how aesthetically pleasing and incredibly Instagrammable our food is! It has the “wow” factor that makes snapping that Instagram photo impossible to resist. People eat with their eyes first, so the artistic presentation of our menu items naturally results in a tastier experience and free marketing for Franchise Owners.
This built-in marketing makes having an organic social media presence easy because user-generated content (UGC) takes much of the heavy lifting off your plate and lets your Instagram followers and fans generate interest for you. With Toastique, we give each location independent ownership over its own Facebook page so you can interact with your local community and promote your location.
Our Ongoing Support Systems
Once you’ve successfully launched and your average day is spent running and overseeing your thriving Toastique location, our team will continue to provide extensive support when you need it. We know that marketing is an aspect of business that needs weekly – if not daily – consideration, but we know that’s a huge ask of Franchise Owners when they’re focusing on the other daily needs of their business. That’s why we have an internal marketing team with over 12 years of experience in advertising and digital marketing to assist all of our Franchise Owners with their grand opening campaigns, as well as provide current and new marketing assets.
Marketing Made Easy for Owners of Any Experience Level
Our most successful Owners come from all walks of life and bring all kinds of backgrounds to restaurant franchise ownership. The systems we’ve put in place – including our marketing strategies – were developed specifically so anyone could learn, no matter how much marketing experience they may have. This rings especially true for the newest Franchise Owner couple to join us, both of whom are bringing expertise outside marketing to make sure they’re successful with their new business!
Please Welcome the Owners Bringing Toastique to Pittsburgh: Chrissy & Brad Sileo!
Their Community-Involved Background
Before making the commitment to become a Franchise Owner, Chrissy Sileo has most recently spent her time teaching yoga at a small boutique after getting her certification in 2021 and recently becoming an empty nester with her husband, Brad. For much of the past 20 years, she split her time between being a stay-at-home mother and teaching at her children’s preschool and volunteering with various organizations involved with their schooling, like the PTA and hockey team.
On the other hand, Brad is bringing his prior business ownership experience to their Toastique after developing and selling his company in the software engineering space five years ago. Today, he continues to advise and act as an investor to tech start-ups part-time while also teaching scuba lessons in his free time. While Chrissy plans to act as the majority manager of their new joint business venture, Brad still plans to be involved in a big way will he maintains his existing part-time work.
Choosing a Franchise Opportunity
Chrissy had always wanted to start a business of her own, especially after seeing the freedom that was possible when Brad was running his company. However, the pair realized they didn’t want to reinvent the wheel and chose to instead look at the established investment opportunities of the franchise world – but with all the options available to them, how could they pinpoint which industry to join?
During her college years, Chrissy worked in and around food service and recognized her passion not only for the industry but the platform it could give her to promote a healthy, fresh lifestyle. So, in 2016, the Sileos began looking into healthy restaurant franchises, first starting with Vitality Bowls, then moving on when they couldn’t find the right fit – until they stumbled upon Toastique Gourmet Toast & Juice Bar.
Why They Chose Our Healthy Toast & Juice Bar Concept
When Brad and Chrissy were first introduced to Toastique, the pair quickly felt the healthy breakfast menu was a perfect match with the diet and lifestyle they like to keep. Once Chrissy had the chance to try the items for herself after dropping her son off at college in Denver, she knew it was the type of business she could see herself and Brad introducing to Pittsburgh. Then, when the Sileos weren’t able to find a negative or red flag during their D.C. Approval Day visit, they felt like everything was aligning to show that they’d found the right franchise for them.
Sitting Down for a 1-on-1 with Chrissy
As the Sileos find the perfect spot for Toastique’s first Pittsburgh location, the couple is busy preparing for their new venture – and their first business together! In between training on the Toastique system and deciding how the pair will distribute their ownership tasks, Chrissy sat down with us for a quick Q&A session to hear more about her perspective on the entire franchise process.
Was there anything about Approval Day or meeting Toastique’s team that stuck out to you?
Chrissy: “I will say Brad and I were both just extremely impressed with both Brianna and Kyle. [We] loved the look and the feel of the locations, loved the product they were serving. One of the things that stood out was when we would walk into a location and the employees saw them walking in, they didn’t seem to change their behavior and get nervous. We’ve all had those jobs where we’re like, ‘Oh no, the boss is here. I better look like I’m really working.’ [But] everybody just seemed truly happy to see them and seemed very comfortable. I liked that feel. People seemed to think that was a good place to be and a good place to work.”
Did you have a favorite item that you tried on the menu?
C: “I loved the Acai Bowl I had in DC [that] I didn’t [try] when I was in Colorado. So, I fell in love with the toast in Colorado and loved [it] again in D.C., but when I had the Acai Bowl, I absolutely loved it! I eat a lot of Acai Bowls, so I felt like I had more of a basis to compare, and yeah – I loved it, but I loved the toast, [too].
The burrata toast is fantastic. We loved the toast of the month; when we were there, it was a chorizo and sweet potato seasonal toast, and that was amazing. I will say [that] everything we tried I’ve absolutely loved. I thought it was all delicious!”
What excites you most about getting your Toastique location open?
C: “Getting to eat it [and] bringing the concept to Pittsburgh. I will say [that] 99% of the people we have told about it are super excited and [say they] can’t wait for this to come. I have so many people [saying], ‘You’ve got to put it here; this is where it has to go.’ So, now I’m just ready to find the location so that we can get it up and running. I can’t wait to have it!”
If you’re prepared to ditch corporate life for a healthy, profitable franchise after learning about how our team supports Franchise Owners with marketing, or you’re ready to start the franchise process after seeing how Brad and Chrissy did it, you’re in the right place. Our gourmet toast and juice bar business model is built for health (and wealth!) focused people, whether you have restaurant experience or not! Take the first step in becoming the newest Franchise Owner to join the Toastique team by completing our 1-minute qualification quiz to get started.