Meet Inc. Innovators: Tim and Kristy Lamers: Kaukauna couple takes on second food location in Fox River Mall

Oct 19, 2009 (The Post-Crescent - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- GTAM | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Kaukauna residents Tim and Kristy Lamers own Great American Cookies and Pretzelmaker in the Fox River Mall. Most mall stores are corporately owned, making the Lamers among just a handful of local entrepreneurs who own and operate stores there.

Q Why did you buy two existing businesses rather than start from scratch?

A Tim: I wanted to purchase an established business. You can look at the numbers and see what they've done and focus on areas where you can make it grow or make it run more efficiently. People know us as the cookie place in the mall and it's very established. That plays a huge part.

Q Pretzelmaker's reputation was not as good. Was that more of an uphill battle?

A Tim: I would consider that more of an extremely distressed business. It needed a lot of attention and I knew my work was cut out for me. I knew the risk versus reward. So far it's panning out to be a very good venture.

Kristy: We had good staff behind us. Tim wouldn't have opened it if he didn't have good staff.

Q Pretzelmaker is from NexCen, the same franchise parent as Great American Cookies. Did they approach you?

A Tim: I would say it was happening more locally. I was hearing from customers and people here in the mall that it was so unfortunate that Pretzelmaker closed. Within two weeks I knew for sure that somebody has to do something about it. So many people liked that product, but unfortunately it wasn't run very well.

Kristy: That's a key point, that the product was always good. It was the staffing and the look of it that were distressed. They had a lot of followers.

Q There's another pretzel shop in the mall. Was that a consideration?

A Kristy: There are followers of both. There are so many of people who walk this mall and the two survived in the same mall for many, many years prior.

Q Do all of the new Pretzelmaker stores include Freshens, the smoothie business that you have here?

A Tim: No. That's something we brought on. Other successful franchisees have done it.

Q Without a deep pockets corporation behind you, you have to weather the ups and downs. Other than adjusting staffing levels, how have you done that?

A Tim: We absolutely avoid the mistakes when times are good or bad. How much money we have tied up in inventory, for example. Because customers pay when they receive the product, we don't have a large account receivable, which is good, but we have to maximize our terms with each one of our vendors. We run lean and efficiently.

Kristy: Between both stores, we don't have a lot of waste. We bake as we go. Our staff has a chart of what sales should be and you bake so much in the morning and so much in the afternoon. At the end of the night, our case is pretty empty and that's because we don't carry over old, stale product. Everything is baked fresh every day. Anything left we donate to the Harbor House.

Tim: With pretzels we save (leftover) product and sell it to a feed mill that grinds it up and gives it to cattle.

Q Have you determined your demographics for Pretzelmaker?

A Tim: It's 95 percent female. The soccer mom with the kids. Tweens. At Cookies, we see a mixture of people. A lot of guys coming out of Scheels.

Kristy: Part of the reason is the location. A lot of women park at target because they have staples they have to buy, the diapers and the toilet paper, at the end, that they don't want to carry around the mall.

Tim: We're excited that Victoria's Secret took over the spot across the hall. Sales have exceeded our expectations and I feel they will continue once Victoria's Secret opens up.

Q The Lamers name means you had deep pockets?

A Tim: No. Our families didn't support us financially, but in every other way possible.

Q Was it tough to get the Pretzelmaker loan?

A Tim: We've not had any problems with the banks. I come in with a very good business plan. It's worked very nicely.

Q You needed big loans. Six figures?

A Tim: Yes. But we have real estate we leverage against. We also have a low standard of living. We live well below our means.

Q Did you think twice about opening during a recession?

A Tim: No. It didn't concern me very much because of knowing we're in the mall already. We already have very good positive sales growth over that the past few years. We are very fortunate that the fox River Mall produces a good shopping environment that keeps bringing people back in.

Maureen Wallenfang: 920-993-1000, ext. 1287, or mwallenfang@postcrescent.com

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