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A Competitive Study

“Taking Care of Your Business”

My wife and I purchased a franchise of Heavenly Ham in 1999 and decided to move from our Georgia home to Columbia, MO to open it up.  I had done extensive research and liked what I saw in the Columbia market.  It seemed to be the perfect opportunity for us and our business to thrive in a progressive and growing economy.  Not only did Columbia have the Flagship school of the University of Missouri system there, but it was also the home to an extensive network of hospitals, medical offices, and regional and national insurance companies.  It seemed to be the perfect town in which to locate our new business.  We had looked at both the Heavenly Ham and the HoneyBaked Ham franchises and decided on the Heavenly brand.  It was a newer and faster growing system of franchisees than was HoneyBaked at the time.

One other thing that Columbia had going for it was that there was not a “ham store” there.  The closest Heavenly Ham and HoneyBaked stores were located in Saint Louis and Kansas City, which were both about a two hours drive from Columbia.  It seemed that we had the central Missouri market all to ourselves, or so we thought.

The buildout was completed in less than a month and we were ready to open.  Our Grand Opening went off without a hitch.  We hired staff and got busy meeting people in the business community.  I joined the Chamber of Commerce, which is rated as a “Five Star Chamber” and became involved in committee work from the start.  Our catering became very popular, especially with our Box Lunches.  Pharmaceutical representatives would come by our store and take bags of Box Lunches throughout central mid-Missouri to doctor’s offices.  The University of Missouri became our largest customer.  We were delivering Box Lunches on campus to various meetings every day.  It seemed like everything went right for us for the first six months that we were open.

Then we got the news!  An established business owner who was from Columbia and had lived there all of his life decided to open up a competing HoneyBaked Ham franchise less than half a mile from our store.  We were devastated upon hearing the news.  Then it got worse.  We received an Express Mail letter from the HoneyBaked Ham Corporate Office in Atlanta letting us know that the HoneyBaked Ham Corporation had just bought out the Heavenly Ham Corporation.  Not only did we have competition, but they now also owned us.  They told us that we were “one big happy family” now that we were under the same umbrella.

It seemed to me that all of our planning and hard work had turned out for naught and that we were doomed to probably have to close and become absorbed by our new “Big Brother”, but we had no choice but to fight back and save our business.  The HoneyBaked Corporation told us that we would have to work out things with the other ham store which was now operating in Columbia.  They told us that we could either merge with them or either of us could buy the other one out.  Neither of those solutions seemed viable to us.  We were still a young franchise and heavily in debt to our local bank.

After all of the dust settled and both stores were open, I decided that it was time for us to look inward and focus on running our business on our strengths.  My wife and I decided it was time for Columbia, MO to have our version of “Ham Wars”.

When we were looking for a location for our store, Heavenly Ham suggested that a town should be at about 100,000 in population to support a store like ours.  Columbia had just surpassed that threshold.  Now Columbia had two similar stores in the same market.  There was no room for both of us to thrive.

We decided that instead of focusing on what our competitor was doing, we would focus on what we did best and that we would keep our efforts on running our business and not worry about theirs.  We intensified our relationship with the Chamber, and I worked on getting elected to leadership positions.  I also was elected to become one of their Ambassadors, which got us invited to all of the ribbon cuttings and ceremonies which businesses chose to celebrate.  We held open houses at our store which brought in business and community leaders.  I also became a member of other local organizations.  We established partnerships with the University of Missouri Athletic Department which paid long-term benefits.

While I was out promoting our business, my wife and our team did a fantastic job in running the day-to-day operations of the store which included keeping our walk-in lunch crowd happy and coming back on a regular basis.  We always said that we were grateful to see a new customer walking in our doors, but we were even more grateful to see them come in a second time!

For the next three years, each of us battled the other to establish dominance, while neither of us was thriving.  Like so many business owners who have debt to service while they are growing their business, our bank loan was tied to our home.  If we did not survive, we would have lost our house as well as our business.

Finally, one day I was driving past the HoneyBaked Ham store and saw that there was a sign on the door.  I drove up to the front in my delivery van that was adorned with my HoneyBaked Ham signs and saw that the HoneyBaked store owner had had enough and decided to close his doors.  Our three years of fierce competition was over.  We survived and won!  The HoneyBaked owner was not quite as “hungry” as we were.

Over the next fifteen years we continued to run our store but kept the same focus on our operations and the need to excel every day.  We eventually converted our store to a HoneyBaked Ham franchise, but we waited about five years after our competitor closed.  I was a little hesitant to convert to a brand that had failed in our town, at least until enough time had passed.  When we did convert, we decided to move to a new location in a brand-new shopping area.  This move and fresh start allowed us to see a 30% increase in our sales in the following year.

We emerged from our competitive experience with several battle scars, but also with the knowledge of how to best compete in business.  Although you need to pay attention to your competition, you need to focus more importantly on what you do best and use that to give you a competitive advantage.  The restaurant business is fiercely competitive, especially in a college town.  We learned many lessons but thankfully emerged as survivors.  We ultimately sold our business after a successful eighteen-year run and moved back to our home state of Georgia.  And yes, we still eat HoneyBaked Ham.  Grocery store deli-meat just doesn’t satisfy you after you become used to having the best!

John Beverstein

Northeast Georgia SCORE Mentor

April 2022

John Beverstein is a resident of Athens.  He moved there following the sale of his Heavenly Ham/HoneyBaked Ham franchise after eighteen years in business in Columbia, MO.  Previous to that we worked as the Executive Director of the Young Harris College Alumni Foundation and as the owner of Sure Shot Photography, which was an event-based photography business based in the Atlanta area.  He joined SCORE following his move back to Georgia so that he could share his business experiences with others in the northeast Georgia area.  He is a graduate of the University of Georgia and Young Harris College.