The Backlash To The Profits-First, Profits-Only Model Of Silicon Valley Is Growing. Here’s A Midwestern Example.

Category: Franchise Development

Mike McFall was wrapping up the first round of edits on his second book when I reached him. The co-CEO of BIGGBY Coffee, a franchise operation with more than 300 locations across the Midwest, McFall published Grind, about how to bootstrap your company to a positive cash flow, in 2019. His second book will be about transitioning to sustainable business models.

But his deeper purpose these days is to spread a new truth about what he believes is the future of business: “It’s about trying to have an important conversation in the world,” he said. “Companies in the future are going to become nurturing environments.”

For the past six years, he, co-founder Bob Fish and BIGGBY have been undergoing a transformation, to a company whose purpose is to help employees the lives they love, via expensive investments in coaching, curriculum and sabbaticals for everyone who has been at the company for five years. The changes apply most directly to the franchise headquarters company, which employs 100 people, but the material is available to franchisees.

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