Beau Delicious! International, the franchisor of Café Yumm! restaurants and manufacturer of food products including the popular Yumm! Sauce, has been named to Inc. Magazine’s Build 100 List. Inc. Magazine began The Build 100 Project by collecting data on more than 100,000 U.S. midmarket companies (those with 85 to 999 employees). It reviewed how many increased employees in every year from 2007 to 2012. Less than 1.5 percent of the companies increased employment during that period. Inc. Magazine focused on employment rather than revenue because increased hiring is more predictive of future sustained growth.
Inc. Magazine narrowed the field to The Build 100 which is a representative sample of those companies with employment growth during the five year period. Each company on the list has agreed to participate in a long-term research project to understand the factors for sustained growth.
Beau Delicious! International is the only Oregon company selected, and one of five companies in the food and beverage segment.
“72 percent of all new U.S. jobs are created by 1 percent of companies,” says Inc. economist-in-resident Gary Kunkie. “The Build 100 represents that top 1 percent of that 1 percent.”
Initial research of The Build 100 provides some interesting commonalities:
1. More than 50 percent of list members identify “people/talent” and “customer service” as the only drivers of competitive advantage.
2. More than 82 percent of the list members said “sharing financial success with your employees” helps a company grow.
3. More than 80 percent of the list members experience a strong connection between values and successful growth.
4. One consistent theme amongst the list members is that company growth depends more on cultural factors like how well employees work together, how employees interact with customers, rather than on financing or product attributes.
5. Another consistent theme is that sharing financial information with employees is correlated to higher productivity and revenue growth. Companies which generously compensated employees in their industry achieved higher performance, but reported being more successful in attracting and retaining the best talent.
Café Yumm! has grown from two restaurants in Eugene in 2007 to 13 restaurants in two states today, with two more under construction. Employees throughout the system have grown from two dozen to over 240 today. Yumm! Sauce is sold in 117 grocery stores through the Northwest. Café Yumm! has been listed the past several years on the Portland Business Journal’s list of fastest growing privately held companies and is the 446th largest franchise company in the U.S. according to the 2013 Top 500 List of Franchise Systems published by Franchise Times.
