With Thanksgiving right around the corner, holiday prep at The Honey Baked Ham Co.® is in full swing. With support from corporate and Franchise Business Leaders (Franchise Business Leaders), HoneyBaked franchisees become masters of the holiday meal, planning well in advance to stay two steps ahead of our busiest season.
With over eight years as HoneyBaked franchisees, spouses Jeff and Toni Madden of Huntington, West Virginia are veterans at navigating the ramp-up to the holidays. But according to the high-school sweethearts, it wasn’t always that way.
Hitting the Ground Running
The store they bought in their hometown was originally a Heavenly Ham that had later been bought by HoneyBaked. At the time, Jeff was working as a paramedic and Toni was a radiologic technologist. When they saw their local HoneyBaked was up for sale, they saw it as an opportunity. After expressing their interest, attending discovery day and going through our training program, they started out as newly minted business owners – three weeks before Thanksgiving.
Jeff recalls, “It was a crazy time. As we like to say, we were drinking from a fire hydrant. Now, we’re drinking from a faucet.”
Getting the Rhythm Down
When we spoke to them in September, Jeff and Toni had already begun preparing their store for the long holiday season. “Drinking from a faucet,” as Jeff puts it, means prep starts in August. They assess their need and place orders for ham, turkey and other products as the summer begins winding down.
That’s also when they start bringing on new hires for the holiday season. Jeff says their staff more than doubles between November and December, with about 10-15 people on staff each day to handle the high-volume output of the busy season, which he says lasts from the week of Thanksgiving through Christmas day.
“It is exciting. We like to take care of people, take care of customers. You try to make everybody happy. We’re in downtime now, as we call it, but we get excited when the season hits,” he says.
Serving America’s Favorite Ham
Even knowing the holiday season would be a busy time of year as HoneyBaked franchisees, Jeff and Toni agree that HoneyBaked’s business model was a big draw for them. They believe buying a HoneyBaked franchise was the right choice – and one that, if they could go back in time and do it all again, they would have made sooner.
“Something that’s really unique to HoneyBaked versus a traditional quick-service restaurant is the retail season,” Toni says. “At our store, in November and December, we’re really a retailer that also does catering. The rest of the year we’re a caterer that sells retail. That combination is unique, and it gives us a little bit of a leg-up on being successful. There’s more than one way to get there.”
“And,” she says, “it’s a great product. It was an easy decision because it’s not something you can find anywhere else. It’s unique. It’s premium.”
If you’re interested in bringing America’s favorite ham to your community, we invite you to explore more about our one-of-a-kind franchise opportunity.
