It’s a kingdom where juicing reigns supreme and the carpe diem is always rule the day.
A Brighton entrepreneur on a mission to increase Smoothie King’s footprint in Michigan is opening a new franchise across the street from the Grand Mall & Office shopping center at 12720 S. Saginaw Road in Grand Blanc.
Christopher Klebba signed an agreement to open 50 new Smoothie Kings in both Michigan and Ohio in 2018. He and his team have already launched 18 stores across the two markets, including a dozen in Michigan. The Grand Blanc location is expected to start blending with a large grand opening celebration in September or October. It will mark Klebba’s 19th Smoothie King, according to the developers.
“We think Grand Blanc is a great community, something we’re very familiar opening in and we’re really excited to get there,” he told What Now Detroit.
Klebba is founding president of the Northern Diamond Management, a private equity firm tied to the holding company that owns all Klebba’s Smoothie King franchises in Michigan and Ohio.
Northern Diamond leased 2,200 square feet of space near the intersection of Saginaw Road and Bella Vista Drive, where they plan to open the new Smoothie King and drive-thru in Grand Blanc.
It’s a busy crossroad sandwiched between the sprawling Grand Mall sh opping center and Grand Blanc Community High School’s east campus.
“I think we just keep picking places with active lifestyles,” said Virginia Kamenitzer, Northern Diamond Management’s marketing director. “It’s not just a quick service restaurant, it’s a place where we can provide a healthy lifestyle choice. So we’re really excited to come to the area and provide this for the families there.”
Smoothie King was founded just outside of New Orleans in 1973. Today, it’s headquartered in Dallas County, Texas. The multinational empire has more than 1,300 stores worldwide, with nearly 300 locations in Korea, Grand Cayman and Trinidad. In the U.S., Smoothie Kings boasts over 1,100 stores scattered across 33 different states.
The juice-bar chain sells an assortment of healthy meal replacements made with a perfect blend of whole fruits, organic vegetables and nutritional enhancers like protein powder, energy boosters, multivitamins, metabolizers and other supplements.
The smoothies come in flavors like high protein espressos, berry-infused fruit blends, mango kale, pineapple spinach, chocolate, veggie superfoods, green tea tango and a Caribbean Way papaya juice blend.
Smoothie King brands itself as a healthy alternative to traditional fast-food options, promoting a “journey of wellness, activity and achievement” and encouraging people to “live purposefully.”
The franchise offers low-calorie vegan and vegetarian smoothies along with 21 energy boost blends, 24 fitness blends, 18 weight management blends, 18 wellness and treat blends and six kid blends.
Smoothie King also has a “no-no list” of over 70 harmful ingredients not used in their smoothies like artificial preservatives, high fructose corn syrup, GMO veggies, nitrates and fat substitutes.
The partnership with Smoothie King was a natural progression for Klebba, who grew up playing sports in Michigan and saw the dearth of healthy eating spots available.
“That’s really what we’re trying to do is give parents another place to take their kids after a sporting event or after practice. A healthy, quick option.”
The 31-year-old Brighton native and his team also got an inside peek at the art of franchising, watching his father help build a brand from the ground up as an early franchisee for Planet Fitness. What he saw was people who came in making $8 or $9 an hour as employees grow into executive-level careers where they earned seven-figure salaries.
“I just got to watch him kind of grow and run a great business and change a lot of peoples’ lives doing franchising in a scaling way. And that’s what got me excited, coming up and seeing his journey as an entrepreneur, and seeing the people he was able to build up,” Klebba said. “We just fell in love with the scaling franchising model because it allows you to take so many people with you and give them an opportunity to build and grow.”
Klebba follows the same model at his stores today, teaching team members managerial and leadership skills. With his team squarely focused on opening five to 10 new Smoothie King locations each year, all of his executives from the director of operations down are internal hires.
“We’ve just kind of had to try and become experts at putting everything that we have into this leadership development piece,” he said. “Because we open so many stores and it’s so hard to find people, we’ve got to build them and create them.”
