OK, I have to admit it. Cary DeMars, a two-time recipient of our Best Bartender award in the Biggest Little Best of Northern Nevada popularity contest, collared me at our Best Of party and asked me if I’d talk to his friends Dale Mills and Jeff Wassmer about their new frozen yogurt franchise. Not one to break my word, even after a few cocktails, I caught up with Dale Mills at his new Sweet Frog Premium Frozen Yogurt. By the way, FROG is actually an acronym, according to the company website at www.sweetfrogyogurt.com, that stands for Fully Rely on God.
So you’ve opened a new frozen yogurt store.
The first of our four stores is at 6637 S. Virginia St., Suite B. It’s next to the Total Wine and BFW Shoes and the Guitar Center, in that shopping center.
How did you come to open a frozen yogurt store or eventually a series of them in Reno?
I’m an MBA candidate right now. I’m just a few months out, and my partner—we’re both military veterans, and we’re just kind of fortunate guys who were in the right spot at the right time. We basically wanted to open some of these amazing shops. They’re kind of from back East, and they’re really taking off back there. We’re just trying to create jobs in Reno. …
So would that be considered a franchise?
Yes it is. We just became a franchise. It was a kind of a corporate-run entity, and then a group of guys got together and said, “Hey, this is amazing. Let’s franchise the brand.” So they did. Our store is Store No. 1, basically. There are about 50-55 stores currently in the pipeline, they’re going through the permitting process and stuff like that, so we’re going to go and hopefully open a hundred stores by next year all over the United States. I personally am not, we’re just [opening] four in Reno.
OK, so how does that work? You pay them a franchise fee, right?
You pay a franchise fee. They currently have this successful brand and know all the ins and outs to ensure profitability. They come up with the concept. We have these mascots, so basically we’re frogged. Our theme—Cookie and Scoop are our mascots, the boy frog and a girl frog. We have all the point-of-sale stuff for the kids. We have bracelets, key chains, hats, T-shirts, hoodies. … It was funny, a couple of days ago, a little boy, about 4-years-old, came in with his dad and mom, and he’d never seen it before. Their mom and dad loved the yogurt as did the little kid. Two days later, his dad said he said, “Hey, let’s go to that frog place.” Perfect marketing there from a 4-year-old.
Do you have to pay to build out the building?
We go in and lease out a building, find the right location, and then negotiate the lease with the landlord. Hopefully, he’ll give you some TI money. That’s “tenant improvement” money to help turn the space into our brand. And then you just hire a contractor, because it’s a commercial space, and he puts all the plumbing and electrical and the walls where you need them, and then you brand it, use their exact colors. That’s basically it.
Do you personally have to pay for the refrigeration units and chairs and …
Exactly. They say an average Sweet Frog costs an average of $250-300,000 per location to open a store.
That’s a lot of money for a couple of new vets.
Exactly. My one veteran friend, my partner, he is a Nevada Air Guard guardsman. He retired from the Nevada Air Guard. He had started a company out of his garage. It was basically a communications company, and over the years, he’s built that into an amazing corporation, employing 350 people for government contracts. He’s the perfect example of an entrepreneur. He didn’t have rich parents, he just worked hard.