The Elegant Simplicity of a Stupid Idea

(FranchisePick.Com) (B5 Theme Day Post:  Elegant Simplicity) Sometimes a business idea is so simple, elegant and obvious that it’s thought to be a stupid idea.  Other times it truly is a really stupid idea.

Great innovators are often called loco. 

They called Ray Kroc loco when he invented the HulaBurger.

They called the founder of Hello, I’m Jello loco when he franchised his all-jello products stores (General Mills had a different name:  trademark infringement).

They called 73-year-old Sylvester Roper loco before (and after) he invented a steam-powered bicycle capable of going 40 mph, crashing into a wall and killing its 73-year old inventor.

And they called the group of corporate lawyers loco for starting and franchising a peanut butter sandwich restaurant called P.B. Loco.  And when that stupid idea started failing, they called them loco for trying to save it by co-branding with an even stupider concept:  the Cereal Bowl all-cereal restaurant.

The moral of the story:  Sometimes when people call you loco, it pays to listen.

The Death of the P.B. Loco Peanutbutterlicious Cafe Chain

This just in from the Appleton Post-Crescent:

Q: There’s a sign on the P.B. Loco Cafe saying it’s available for lease. Is it moving or closing?

A: It’s closing. The P.B. Loco Peanutbutterlicious Cafe, at 4353 W. Wisconsin Ave., Grand Chute, will serve its last sandwich March 30. It’s a modern cafe — done in peanut butter, jelly and chocolate colors — that sells gourmet peanut butter in its creative menu and by the jar.

It will be the fifth P.B. Loco to close, including the flagship Mall of America branch that shut Dec. 31.

The branch here had been open since December 2006. When it closes, there will be just one P.B. Loco operating, in Scottsdale, Ariz.

The closures are a result of a corporate restructuring, said the Grand Chute franchise owner Kelly Klesmit, who responded to Post-Crescent questions via e-mail.

“It has simply become too expensive to operate outside of a franchise system,” she wrote. “While the cafe has become quite popular, and doing a decent amount of business, we are being forced to cover expenses that we hadn’t planned for.”

P.B. Loco’s executives had switched the company’s focus to wholesale operations. They recently aligned with The Cereal Bowl, a Miami eatery that serves breakfast cereals, to transform its P.B. Locos into dual-branded cafes.

“In a corporate e-mail sent out in December, we were told that we may have an opportunity to become a part of this new venture. However, the new co-brand is even more unproven (and) risky, and the first cafe isn’t scheduled to open until late spring in Miami,” Klesmit said.

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