Rich and Greg Komen decided they wanted a empire and then went a built it. Not the normal path, but… Cinnabon!
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those.
[Maven Roofing Ad]
Dave Young:
Hey, welcome back to the Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here alongside Stephen Semple and today we’re going to unpack the story of Cinnabon.
Stephen Semple:
Yes.
Dave Young:
Now Stephen told me the topic for today. He said, “Now I know you know about this one.” And then he said Cinnabon. And I’m like, “You know, actually I don’t.”
Stephen Semple:
Really?
Dave Young:
I’m really more … You know what I’m really more interested in is why you-
Stephen Semple:
Have you never gone to a shopping mall?
Dave Young:
… why you think I would know Cinnabon? Just one look at me and you go, “That guy’s seen some Cinnabon.”
Stephen Semple:
Well, they only have like 1,800 locations.
Dave Young:
Okay. Here’s the deal. Here’s the deal. Remember I spent the first 50 years of my life in a town that didn’t have a mall.
Stephen Semple:
I know, but you’ve grown up since then, Dave.
Dave Young:
I know.
Stephen Semple:
They’re still around. It’s not like …
Dave Young:
They’re around, but we would steer our children away from the Cinnabon when we went to a mall. It was like, “No, we’re not just making you all sticky with frosting.” So the times I’ve had any kind of Cinnabon product, and they’re in what, Wendy’s or places now. Maybe it’s not Wendy’s. Is it Wendy’s?
Stephen Semple:
I’m not sure.
Dave Young:
They’re somewhere, you can buy Cinnabon stuff. Maybe it’s Taco Bell. I don’t know. Again, remember, I’m not as familiar with Cinnabon as you thought I was. Dive right in, Stephen.
Stephen Semple:
You’re getting kind of defensive here, Dave.
Dave Young:
Edumicate us on the Cinnabons.
Stephen Semple:
Well, they are now like 1800 locations worldwide, 50 countries. They’re now part of go to foods, huge margins in this type of business. And what’s really interesting, all built around one product. And they sell over two million buns a day, just huge. But this is a very different story than pretty much all of the other stories we’ve done because most of the stories we’ve done have started with a problem that the entrepreneur faced. They solved that problem and turned it into a business. Many of them did not start with, “I’m going to do this thing and make it a business.” It’s like, “I’m going to do this thing. Oh, I should turn it into a business.”
Dave Young:
“Oh, hey, look, people seem to like this.” Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
Right. It was started by Rich Komen and his son, Greg. And Rich was an entrepreneur who had been involved basically in the food industry, developing franchises, things along that lines. And he got into the food business after graduating because he saw concessions in the malls and said, “These are crappy.”
Dave Young:
Right. Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
Because this was back in the early 80s when malls were just … And the food court in the mall was just sort of getting going. And he saw-
Dave Young:
Like a pretzel or a corn dog.
Stephen Semple:
He saw the growth potential and so his idea was to develop a food offering, but he was a retail strategist, not a baker. And he set out to create a product that he wanted to be so irresistible it could sell itself in this super competitive environment, the shopping mall, right?
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
So it was built all from the perspective of the consumer, not the kitchen. And what he wanted to do is have an idea that right from the start he could take national. So it’s 1985 and Rich and Greg Komen, who are [inaudible 00:04:53] father and son team wanted to just basically build this national company and he saw this growth potential in the food court space. He saw that exploding and he had been approaching actually a lot of malls to get a spot in the mall and he finally got one who was willing to give him a chance. Now he needed a concept. This guy kind of went about it in a weird way. I’ll get the mall space and then I’ll find the concept.
Dave Young:
I’ll find something to sell people. People seem to like these cinnamon rolls. Well, all right, yeah.
Stephen Semple:
So he’s literally on a business trip to Kansas City and he stumbles across this single kiosk selling this sweetbread that’s in a spiral with a glaze and cinnamon called T.J. Cinnamons.
Dave Young:
T.J. Cinnamons. Okay.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. Which is owned by Rice and his wife, Joyce. Rice is a cameraman. Joyce is a school teacher. Rich wants to buy the franchising rights and turn it into a national chain.
Dave Young:
Wow.
Stephen Semple:
And he pitches them on the idea of moving fast and building big. He’s so confident that he’s going to get the rights he commits to that lease in the food stall of the shopping mall. They get a little overwhelmed.
Dave Young:
No kidding.
Stephen Semple:
And tell Rich, “We need to kind of think about this,” and they actually decide no.
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
Now Rich has got a little bit of a dilemma. He’s opening in six months and he’s got no name, no recipe. He’s got nothing.
Dave Young:
Well, look-
Stephen Semple:
He’s got nothing.
Dave Young:
Here’s what I know. Ask any grandma in America, find 20 of them and just pick the one that’s got the best recipe.
Stephen Semple:
Well, what he does is he enlists Jerilyn Brusseau who’s known for exceptional baked goods. Because remember, he is from the industry. And so he and his son go about trying to develop a better bun that’s richer, tastier, sweeter than T.J. Cinnamons. It’s like they want to beat T.J. Cinnamons, but trial after trial after trial after trial, they come up short. Tons of recipes, rejects all of them because here’s the other problem is the baking time is taking 30 minutes and what they know is … This is back in the day when customers would tolerate 14 minutes. We’re not going to tolerate that today. So they tried to accelerate the baking, crank the oven temperature, widen the trays. Everything was unworkable.
Now here’s the advantage that we have with the fact we’ve got somebody from outside of the baking industry because here’s what Rich discovers is that if it cooks for 14 minutes, the internal temperature gets to 165 degrees, which is considered safe. But by industry standards, it’s not fully cooked, but it’s fluffy, it’s soft, it’s a bit chewy.
Dave Young:
It’s gooey.
Stephen Semple:
It’s gooey. And he’s like, “I think this is better.”
Dave Young:
Yeah, absolutely. Nobody wants a fully baked cinnamon roll.
Stephen Semple:
Right. But here’s where the problem-
Dave Young:
Take a bunch of the Pillsbury, pop the thing open and you put them in a pie pan and the ones in the center are the ones everybody’s grabbing, not the baked up dry ones around the edges.
Stephen Semple:
Right. But here’s the problem. Because it doesn’t do the full baking, the cinnamon flavor was lacking. So they did all sorts of experiments with all sorts of different cinnamons till they came across Sumatra cinnamon.
Dave Young:
Sumatra cinnamon. Okay.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. Because it’ll create that cinnamon flavor without the excessive heat. Other cinnamons needed the heat.
Dave Young:
Okay.
Stephen Semple:
So now they got a recipe and they need a name. So they go with bon, which is French for good.
Dave Young:
It’s good. Yes.
Stephen Semple:
And cinnamon. Cinnabon.
Dave Young:
Yeah. I love it.
Stephen Semple:
And add world-famous because why not?
Dave Young:
Oh, so it was world-famous from the beginning?
Stephen Semple:
It was world-famous from the beginning.
Dave Young:
Stay tuned. We’re going to wrap up this story and tell you how to apply this lesson to your business right after this.
[Using Stories To Sell]
Dave Young:
Let’s pick up our story where we left off and trust me you haven’t missed a thing.
Stephen Semple:
So now they got a recipe and they need a name. So they go with bon, which is French for good.
Dave Young:
It’s good. Yes.
Stephen Semple:
And cinnamon. Cinnabon.
Dave Young:
Yeah, I love it.
Stephen Semple:
And add world-famous because why not?
Dave Young:
Oh, so it was world-famous from the beginning?
Stephen Semple:
It was world-famous from the beginning.
Dave Young:
Sure. Cinnamon and good. Everybody loves those. Everybody knows cinnamon and good.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah.
Dave Young:
Okay.
Stephen Semple:
So December 4th, 1985, the first Cinnabon opens in the Seattle SeaTac Mall and it’s an event. They put on a show. Watch the ingredients being mixed, rolled. There’s this cream cheese frosting and it does great. $500 sales in the first day and the second day was even better. Now, Rich learns that T.J. Cinnamon, who rejected him, have decided to franchise and go into malls.
Dave Young:
Okay. Yeah, sure they did.
Stephen Semple:
Sure they did. And look, no mall’s going to take both. So he needs to do something that stand out because he’s got to be the better choice. So they decide, he and his son decide they need to use smell. Because anytime the ovens opened or whatnot, they notice the smell and a crowd would gather. So they were like, “Okay, how do we create smell?” Well, they can’t turn off the ventilation. That’s against code. So the first thing it did was they installed systems with lowest possible ventilation allowed. But even then the smell is coming in waves. So they came up with this idea. Why don’t we just bake sugar and cinnamon?
Dave Young:
Yeah, bake that all the time.
Stephen Semple:
Bake that all the time. And that’s what they decided to do. So they started baking sugar and cinnamon. When you walk past a Cinnabon, there’s this wafting, delicious, incredible, fresh baked smell coming out of the store that competes with everyone. Like you know it’s there. You haven’t turned the corner in the mall yet and you know it’s there.
Dave Young:
When you’re walking through a mall with four little children, you smell it and then you’re like, “Hey, let’s walk on the other side to …”
Stephen Semple:
As far as I know, they are really the first business that I’ve been able to come across that has used scent as part of their marketing tactic. And they basically bottled one of the most delicious scents possible; sugar and cinnamon.
Dave Young:
I love it.
Stephen Semple:
By 1998, there’s 500 locations. They’re doing $300 million in sales and they sell for $65 million to the American Retail Group. And Greg, the son, gets to keep eight locations of his choice because he wants to keep running stuff. And then they went on to being the success that they are today. But the thing that I love was there was an advantage to them not being from the baking industry because that whole thing of by a baker, it’s not fully cooked. To them it was like, “Well, it’s done in the speed we need it done. And in fact, it tastes better.”
Dave Young:
There’s a lot of baked goods that kind of felt like … My oldest daughter in particular made really good toll-house chocolate chip cookies and never baked them fully because they were harder to get off the pan and once they cooled down, they solidified a bit, but they were delicious. They were just soft. And so smarter than professional bakers.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. Sometimes you need that outside perspective that makes you think about things differently. But then from a marketing perspective, the other part that I loved is from a marketing perspective, you’re in a mall and back in those days, malls had tons of traffic, good malls still do and they still thought about, how do I attract people to my product? And it was the scent.
Dave Young:
We tell business owners all the time that good location and good signage is permanent advertising, right?
Stephen Semple:
Right. And they upped it by adding the smell.
Dave Young:
Well, the smell is the advertisement.
Stephen Semple:
Like good location, good signage. And this [inaudible 00:14:04] smell.
Dave Young:
Yeah, I’m saying that the smell is another sign.
Stephen Semple:
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
Dave Young:
It’s a sign you don’t have to have your eyes open to see.
Stephen Semple:
They could have ignored it going, “Yeah, well, when we open the oven…” I loved his observation of, “When we open the oven all of a sudden it attracted people. How do we create this smell all the time?” And I just love the fact that … And I never knew this. I never realized what they just do is bake cinnamon and sugar all day long. I had no idea.
Dave Young:
I got to try that [inaudible 00:14:35].
Stephen Semple:
Just throw a bunch of that in the bottom of the oven and let’s go. I thought it was brilliant.
Dave Young:
What’s the recipe for that? How long do you leave it in? Is it going to burn? I don’t know how that works, but I love it.
Stephen Semple:
Oh, in terms of the cinnamon and sugar? I have no idea. I have no idea.
Dave Young:
Yeah. It’s amazing. So I just made myself a note that I’m going to mention this story the next time I teach Portals in September.
Stephen Semple:
Oh, there you go.
Dave Young:
So Portals and the 12 Languages of the Mind. The 12 languages of mind includes smell. It’s an actual language. And this is a great … It’s hard to come up with an example of using smell in marketing.
Stephen Semple:
Well, especially where these guys are so purposeful about it. They literally went down the path of, “How do we make this happen?” It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t a byproduct. It was, “Okay, how do we actually make this so it’s happening all the time and that smell is always there?”
Dave Young:
Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
You’re right. It is hard to come up with an example. So that’s awesome that you’ll be able to use that for Portals.
Dave Young:
Yeah, that’ll be fun. It’s in September. If you want to take the Portals class, look at wizardacademy.org.
Stephen Semple:
It’s an awesome class. I took it and it’s a fabulous class that really gets you thinking about things differently.
Dave Young:
It’s fun.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah, it is a fun class. Real, really fun class.
Dave Young:
All right. Well, thank you for the Cinnabon story. This is sort of a short episode. Anything else you want to ramble about?
Stephen Semple:
I just want to say folks go over to wizardacademy.org and click on classes and absolutely try to take Dave’s Portal class. It’s a phenomenal class and you’ll get a chance to meet Dave in person.
Dave Young:
And it’s fun. It’s a weird woo-woo class. I love it.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah.
Dave Young:
I love teaching it. I love the material. Always have.
Stephen Semple:
All right. Awesome.
Dave Young:
I can’t wait to meet the … Look, let’s have the whole podcast audience show up. That would be fun.
Stephen Semple:
There you go.
Dave Young:
Everybody is welcome.
Stephen Semple:
Everyone, come on down. Hey, before you guys go, I just have one thing I just would like to just add. It’s a little bit of a thought to challenge you in your business. We’ve talked a lot in this episode on Cinnabon about smell and using smell in marketing and it’d be really easy to fall into this trap. Look, what I do is advertising consulting and it’ll be really easy to go, “Oh, I can’t use that idea because my business is advertising consulting.”
So here’s what I want you to do. Let’s change our thought. I’m going to challenge all of us a little bit, including myself. Here’s what the question I want you to ask. Given that I’m in advertising consulting, how could I use smell to market my business? Ask yourself that question, just insert your business. Given that I am X business, how could I use smell in the marketing of my business? Just ask yourself that question, let it sit in the mind. Let’s see what happens in the next little while. And hey, you get some really cool [inaudible 00:17:33] insight, share them with me. I’m going to let you go now. Thanks.
Dave Young:
Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and leave us a big, fat, juicy five star rating and review at Apple Podcasts. And if you’d like to schedule your own 90-minute empire building session, you can do it at empirebuildingprogram.com.
