Taking kids under 10 out to a nice casual dining restaurant
is an experience most parents dread. No matter how well-behaved a child may be,
the setting is typically unnatural for kids, and the child’s instincts to play
are generally and uniformly suppressed, resulting in an uncomfortable
experience for all. This sad reality makes what should otherwise be a relaxing
and enjoyable outing for the entire family, into more of a grueling production
for everyone involved. And if you want to take the kid(s) out someplace for one
of their birthday parties, there are a limited number of options which, while
geared more towards the enjoyment of children than the typical restaurant, do
not offer anything more exciting than what most kids can experience via their
Xbox or PlayStation. Ticket redemption games aren’t really that entertaining
for most kids, and parents these days don’t want to suck down a mixture of bad
pizza and high fructose corn syrup-laden sodas.
In every way – the combination of a menu consisting of
high-quality organic food, with a venue layout featuring a distinct casual
dining area for adults and a huge customized play area for kids, realized by
the restaurant model Giggles N’ Hugs has been successfully executing in LA for
a few years now – speaks directly to the underserved family-friendly dining
market of today. Parents can relax while the kids get some clean, healthy
exercise at Giggles N’ Hugs, enjoying the themed Gymboree-like play area, with
elements such as kid-sized castles, giant climbers and swings, numerous types
of tactile interactive toys, and ball pits. GIGL has seen tremendous reception
with its initial three locations in upscale shopping centers around LA, as
numerous A-list celebrities have taken their kids to eat and play at the
restaurants.
Giggles N’ Hugs even employs helpful, trained staff to cater
to the kid play area, enabling the restaurant to also offer busy parents a
child drop-off service, so they can enjoy shopping, unencumbered. This overall
approach towards making the locations a child-centric experience is further
facilitated by periodically scheduled entertainment of various kinds, ranging
from arts and crafts, to karaoke sing-a-longs, to face painting, and even live
acts like puppet shows or music, brought to patrons by professional child
entertainers. A unique and highly synergistic business model such as this has
quickly won immense interest from mall operators around the country, who want
to offer their patrons the amenities that come with having a Giggles N’ Hugs in
their mall. And GIGL even recently announced that shopping center juggernaut
Westfield (OTC: WFGPY), with whom GIGL currently has two locations, is now
seeking to expand on the existing partnership.
This is huge news, considering the global shopping center
footprint Westfield is known for, including such iconic locations as the
Westfield London or the Westfield San Francisco Centre. It is an announcement
that augurs well for GIGL’s plans to expand from three to twelve company-owned
locations by the end of 2017, and which also spells out success for ongoing
talks with other large mall owners across the country, as well as interested
franchise operators in North America, and around the world. In fact, the
company has already received considerable interest from several potential
international franchisees, spanning key growth markets in Latin America, as
well as Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Parents getting to eat top shelf organic dishes and not
having to feed their kids garbage, while also being able to relax in their own
dining area, casually sipping on a glass of wine or beer, while the kids safely
burn off some of that abundant energy they always seem to have – is likely a
universal language all its own. The blue sky potential for this highly unique
execution of a restaurant concept is one of the real major plot points in the
Giggles N’ Hugs story. But investors need look no further than recent Q2
filings for the hardcore facts, like steadily increasing sales volume, and
growing receptivity to the company’s most lucrative core offering, themed
birthday parties. Private party rentals were up handsomely in Q2 (ended June
28), with year-over-year gains of 3.4 percent, even as the Giggles N’ Hugs
location in the Glendale Galleria tracked such performance with a 5.5 percent
jump in overall net sales.
Net sales across the operation were up 0.8 percent for the
year, owing in large part to the sustained drive for operational excellence
from former California Pizza Kitchen operations and finance executives, Philip
Gay (Chief Business Development Officer) and John Kaufmann (Interim-President).
The entire bench of senior leadership at GIGL has serious chops in fact, with
multiple decades of experience in the industry under their collective belts,
allowing the company to brilliantly navigate what is all-too-often a perilous
sector for many young companies.
To learn more, check out Giggles N’ Hugs website
www.gigglesnhugs.com
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