White Spot Ltd. is expanding its Triple O’s brand in the next month to Langara College, the University of British Columbia (UBC) and British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT).
It already operates Triple O’s-branded restaurants at two Douglas College campuses and its director of operations, Scott Lewis, told Business in Vancouver last week that he believes post-secondary institutions make great locations for restaurants.
Executives at the other major Lower Mainland-based fast food franchisor, A&W Food Services of Canada Inc., are less keen to open restaurants on campuses, even though the chain has locations at UBC, Carlton University and Wilfred Laurier University.
“We consider college campuses interesting, but, for us, they’re non-strategic,” A&W vice-president of new restaurant expansion, Graham Cooke, told BIV August 9
“The only institutional sector that we’ve found interesting is airports. There’s lots and lots of traffic – far more, typically, than there would be in a university setting.”
A&W has franchised locations both pre-security and post-security at both the Vancouver and Calgary international airports. They produce much higher volume than the average A&W restaurant.
So Cooke said he would jump at the opportunity to have restaurants at the Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal airports.
One obstacle is that airport authorities often hire one company to operate all food services. If that company decides that they’re not interested in an A&W, then A&W is out of luck, Cooke explained.
A&W has 11 corporately owned and 729 franchised restaurants.
Approximately half of White Spot’s 65 full-service restaurants and 55 of its 60 Triple-O’s-branded restaurants are franchised.
Glen Korstrom
Twitter: GlenKorstrom