![]() ![]() ![]() Santa visit and photo hours vary by date and location. Way too many to list individually! Use the search box above to search by name of mall or city. “And it needs to be the best treat you can buy in the market period, and that’s what we hang our hat on.Looking for daily mall open and close times? We are constantly updating our list of 1,394 malls and shopping centers. A local favorite sweet spot has opened their newest location downtown. “At the end of the day, people are coming to our stores to buy a treat,” Kuntz says. “But, that said, the current environment is rough.”įrom day one to now, 100 plus units and 35 years later, Andy’s remains focused on selling the best product, the best treats, for customers, Kuntz says. “We’re all here to serve them and make sure that they have the tools they need to be successful,” Kuntz says. Still, Andy’s has always been good at attracting employees because of its family environment and culture, which can be rare in the quick-service segment, Kuntz says. As a seasonal business, hiring has long had highs and lows for the family brand. But for 35 years in the business, Kuntz says hiring the right people has been the No. Over the past two years, Andy’s had to navigate intensified pressure from the labor shortage that impacted restaurants across the country. Learning from the past is necessary, too. It’s a different mindset to grow a market rather than grow a store, and it requires looking toward the future. Kuntz say the company looks for franchisees to bring on a minimum of five stores as the brand prefers to have only one or two franchisees in one market. We’re constantly pushing and wanting to grow not only the brand, but each one as individual stores and sales.” They want to build this brand and expose it to as many people as they can. “These guys don’t want to sit on their laurels,” Kuntz says. Throughout Andy’s growth, the brand continues to prioritize finding the right fit in franchisees and providing them the tools and infrastructure to be successful. “Twenty percent is a comfortable number where we feel like we can continue to grow, test our teams, learn from what we’re doing right and learn from what we’re doing wrong and avoid any bigger problems,” Kuntz says. In the next year, Andy’s plots 20 percent unit growth in the Southeast with a special focus on the Florida market as a way to reduce the business’s seasonality. The brand improved service times and showed customers they took safety seriously. Perhaps both because of the comfort consumers crave during scary times and the appeal of a drive-thru during a pandemic, Andy’s thrived. The past few years witnessed Andy’s reach a tipping point in sales. “We are certainly a comfort product, and you grab your dog and your kids and you go to Andy’s, and you sit on the curb, and you have a concrete, a sundae, and it feels good.” This defied other restaurants’ pandemic performances, but during the troubling year, guests were attracted to Andy’s comfort and safety, Kuntz says. In 2020, Andy’s saw $124.39 million in sales, up 16.4 percent from the prior year. And sales matched the level of success Andy’s found in unit expansion. But franchising opened the doors to becoming a national brand for Andy’s. “It’s kind of like a relay race and you hand off the baton and you hope the next guy can run faster than the first guy,” Kuntz says.Īt times, it’s easy to get stuck in the stress of running a few restaurants day-to-day, and growing even more may seem out of reach. Along the way, Kuntz convinced his father franchising made sense. Working so many hours in the heart of operations, Kuntz says they understood that side of the business as he assumed leadership, and they continued to uphold his family’s values as well. “That was largely for one reason mainly-we couldn’t afford failure,” Kuntz says. Working 100 hours a week open to close, Andy and Dana would take minimal breaks, sometimes going to the office, putting two chairs together, and napping for 30 minutes before the evening rush. By the early 2000s, Andy’s started franchising, which ignited growth across multiple states. Ultimately, I think it delivered a better product.”Īt the original mom-and-pop business, Kuntz and his high school sweetheart (and now wife) Dana worked hard through the business’s expansion in the 1990s. “ When you went to duplicate that, it became more challenging,” CEO Andy Kuntz says of scaling the homegrown chain, “but I think it was the right way to do it. Thirty-five years later and 100 plus units in, Andy’s just reported sales records at $1.39 million per unit. John and Carol Kuntz opened Andy’s in the small town of Osage Beach, Missouri, and named it for their son. It was a modest concept that provided a living for the Kuntz family. When the first Andy’s Frozen Custard opened in 1986, there was never a thought of building a national chain. ![]()
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