Big Business

I’ve noticed since opening PJP West a few months ago, we receive the following questions much more frequently:

1. Is this a franchise?

2. Where else do you have locations?

3. Who owns this? Where do they live? What else do they do?

4. Can I buy a franchise of this?

And In short, just so we are all keeping up, here are the answers:

1. No

2. 3.2 miles away on Nifong Blvd

3. One family, we live here, and two stores is a full time x two job, so the only other thing we do is try to have decent work/life balance

4. No

Not that we didn’t get those questions with just one location, but it is without question more common now. And actually, I always take the franchise question as a compliment…as in, we look enough like we have it all together to be a marketable business strategy that others would purchase. And that’s such a funny idea to me because we all know I have control issues and the mere thought of selling a PJP store to someone stops me in my tracks. Suffice it to say, I’ll never say never, but I think I’m more of a company owned chain of stores kind of girl.

Which brings up a bigger question that I’ve been thinking about a bit…where do we differentiate between small business and big business in America today? According to the United States government, a small business has revenues of up to $40 million dollars a year. HUH. WHO THE HECK DECIDED THAT? It is impossible to me that the businesses with $100,000 in revenue are lumped into the same category as those with $40 million in revenue. And we wonder why small business struggles so much…because if the small business interest is represented by the multi-millionaire business people, where does that leave the rest of us single million dollar or less businesses? (Actually, this gives vibes of an IRS influenced decision, doesn’t it? Unless you are from the IRS and reading this, then I’m just kidding. I’m sure it wasn’t you all. At all.)

So, I have no real point to any of this..but to say that it feels like what we do every single day is big pie business. But not a franchise big pie business. At least for now or until $40 million. Ahem.