Freshii CEO says growth still underway, but bottlenecks forced revised timelines

CALGARY — The CEO of healthy fast-food chain Freshii says bottlenecks in new markets, delays from major franchise operators and the setback at outlets in Target stores combined to force the company’s revised growth outlook late last month.

Speaking at a small-business conference in Calgary, Matthew Corrin said the combination meant fewer outlets could open this year, but that the stores are still going ahead.

“As a fast-growing company, we learned things that we didn’t have the benefit of a year ago that caused additional bottlenecks in opening those stores,” Corrin said.

On Sept. 26, Freshii revised down expected store openings for the year to between 90 and 95 from 150 to 160, and total expected stores open by the end of 2019 from at least 810 to 730 stores.

But Corrin says the stores are still on their way.

“It wasn’t a matter of if those stores opened, but when,” he said. “For all intents and purposes, nothing at all changed in the business.”

Permitting and construction delays, along with slower than expected timelines for major franchise operators, pushed store opening timelines from the expected nine months to 12, he said.

“Every city we go into has a different permitting timeline, different landlords for the most part, different general contractors.”

Corrin said the company has made numerous new hires this year, and changed some policies to help store rollouts and that the timing is now back to nine months — but not in time to recover the store opening numbers for this year.

He said the company’s decision to end an 18-outlet pilot with Target, because a lack of foot traffic at the retailer also cut into net growth numbers.

The revised growth outlook sent the company’s stock, which only listed in an IPO in January, down by a third.