After a 41-year career at Burger King, Jim Myers opened his first Rita’s Italian Ice on December 4, 2023, in Streetsboro, Ohio. It was 15 degrees, but there was a line down the street.
Seasonality didn’t matter on this day. Customers had already been waiting for the opening after the store was delayed due to the county requiring a grease basin to be installed.
“They were waiting for us because we were on Facebook and everything else,” Myers says. “The community embraced it. We had pent-up demand from our consumer base to get us open. So once we opened, we got hammered.”
Myers entered Rita’s system thanks to CEO Linda Chadwick, a good friend and colleague he worked with at Burger King. He eventually saw her on the show “Undercover Boss” and it intrigued him.
“I called her, and she said, ‘You got to come check this out,’” Myers says.
The industry veteran was attracted to the product. The company’s Italian ice is made fresh daily from a rotating selection of over 80 flavors. Other key products include frozen custard, gelati, concretes, frozen coffee, Rita’s Blenders, and milkshakes.
Myers also appreciated the seasonal part of it when it came to employees. Myers hires a lot of teenage employees—as young as 14 and 15 years old—and that labor pool is readily available during Rita’s peak summer season.
“I’ve got over close to 50 employees, and we have people applying all the time,” Myers says. “They love it, and it’s a great atmosphere. That’s really what attracted me is the product and the culture.”
The site he picked sat vacant for two decades. However, Myers knew it had potential because an estimated 50,000 cars drive by every day. It was once a Flowerama, Checkers & Rally’s, and a check cashing store, so he knew it could attract traffic. One challenge was parking, but he made a deal with Chase Bank—who he does business with—to allow customers to use the bank’s parking lot. He also included garage doors that open and add 40 patio seats during the warmer months.
“The city was ecstatic,” Myers says. “This property looked terrible for 20 years. And I’m not exaggerating. It looked terrible and now it’s beautiful. The property turned out beautiful. The site looks nice. The building’s just gorgeous and we’re very proud of it. The community has embraced it and it’s been very good for us.”
Most Rita’s locations only have a walk-up window, but Myers is a firm believer in the power of drive-thru, which he knew a lot about working at Burger King. It’s especially convenient in Ohio because when the weather is cold and harsh, customers don’t want to exit their vehicle. The drive-thru—which accounts for 60 percent of revenue while third-party-delivery mixes 9 percent—allows customers to stay in their car and helps Myers’ location remain open year-round. There’s also space for people to enjoy the treats inside.
“Even in the winter months, people in Ohio love custard, and they’ll come out in the winter time as well to get it,” Myers says.
Typically, shops in colder temperatures are open seasonally, but Rita’s has a strategy to maintain sales and traffic within these periods.
Last year, the company launched a peppermint mocha treat during the holidays, and each quarter, the brand releases new promotions. Myers is also mindful about maintaining an online presence. His company is diligent around reaching customers through Facebook, Yelp, and other digital sites and partnering with local organizations and schools.
“Rita’s does have shops to stay open year-round because in the South they do stay open year-round because they don’t have the weather elements that we do here,” Myers says. “And they do have marketing programs, like I said, per quarter in the winter months to where you have new products introduced. And we change our flavors every day and we post them every day and we change our custard flavors once a week and we get that out there to our consumers too. And they wait for it and they want to know what’s out there when their favorite ice flavors are there.”
It’s a family business. His wife Karen helps with accounting, his youngest son Dan runs operations, and his oldest son Jay takes care of IT and marketing needs.
“I taught [Dan] how to develop the shop, build it, do the contracts with the contractors,” Myers says “ … [Jay’s] been in fast food as well with a large franchise organization in the Burger King system. So he knows all the marketing stuff pretty well. So he’s been a big help on third party and security systems and the POS that he manages and takes care of for us. … Everybody knows their roles. We work well together. Our plan is long term for my wife and I to turn it over to our boys, and they’ll be the owners, and we’ll retire at some point.”
Myers’ group is part of a growing franchise. The brand has 575 locations worldwide, with more expected to open by the end of 2024. Some of that will be new markets in Texas and Michigan.
Myers intends to open additional locations himself. As of mid-October, he was scouting future spots. There’s one large building that could be split in half, with Rita’s taking one side and a drive-thru, although the landlord must find another tenant before they agree to it. He’s also hoping to acquire an outlet from a fellow franchisee. He has meetings twice a month with his broker and Jake Chippas, Rita’s senior director of real estate.
“We look at sites all the time,” Myers says.
