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First New Minute Man Restaurant Slated for 2020Lock Icon

3 min read

Perry Smith, the former Arkansan working to revive the Minute Man Restaurant brand, was in town last week and called for a chat with your Whispers staff.

He was headed to El Dorado with business partner Brig. Gen. John Michel, now retired from the Air Force, to visit with another partner, Linda McGoogan, who owns and operates the last Minute Man standing, at 318 W. Main St.

Smith said he’d signed an exclusive agreement with Newmark Moses Tucker Partners of Little Rock to handle Minute Man real estate matters.

“We’re still focused right now on opening up two stores in the Little Rock area and then one in Conway, if possible,” Smith said. “That’s our first round and then the second round would be kind of working our way up to the northwest part of the state,” Fort Smith, Fayetteville, Bentonville, etc.

Target date for that first new Minute Man: July 4, 2020.

Marching Orders

Since Smith and McGoogan announced their plans in January, diners from all over the state have been making “pilgrimages” to the El Dorado Minute Man, Smith said, and McGoogan’s revenue is up about 30%. “That’s been a bit of a blessing and a curse, because she tells me how busy she is,” he said.

Michel, who before his retirement was commanding general of the NATO Air Training Command-Afghanistan, said he will be focusing on strategy and innovation at Minute Man. “I specialize in organizations that are working to develop a growth strategy,” he said.

“Three of my projects that I led in the [Department of Defense] were all multibillion-dollar transformation efforts,” Michel said. “My last one was a $7 billion effort, building the Afghan air force for NATO.”

Michel will be seeking to leverage Minute Man’s brand recognition through strategic partnerships, “making sure that the resurgence of the Minute Man brand is done from the inside out” — i.e., from Arkansas. That means that Minute Man will hire Arkansas talent, architects, lawyers, web developers, etc.

Michel also will work to integrate technology into the development of Minute Man restaurants.

One of the qualities that drew him to the Minute Man brand, Michel said, was “the inherent brand association with this simple concept of patriotism and service.” Once the brand is re-established, through the development of six or seven restaurants in the next couple of years, “then we see that there’s a really unique niche,” he said. “And that niche is being able to franchise this with a very special preference given to veterans.”

In conclusion, Michel said, “We’re excited to relaunch the brand here. But we have an ambitious vision of where we believe we can create something that people anywhere would be proud to have in their community, and we think we have a specific group of people who could enable the success of that through their own commitment to service.”

In other words, Smith and Michel have been thinking hard about this whole thing. Stay tuned.

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