What American fastfood connoisseur wouldn't love a massive tortilla pouch packed with meat, oozy cheese, and fistfuls of fries? Overseas, French tacos are all the rage. The category is now one of the fastest-growing across all delivery platforms in France, where Paris-based O'Tacos is gobbling up more than its share of the quick-service restaurant market. Introduced in 2011 by two brothers in Bordeaux who were soon joined by a drywaller from Grenoble, O'Tacos has grown to 307 units across France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Spain, Italy, and Germany, with annual revenue surpassing $263 million. O'Tacos grand openings-often celebratory events featuring French rap stars and Instagram influencers-are reportedly occurring in France at a faster rate than McDonald's. Fans line up for hours to get their hands on the beefed-up poutine in a wrap.
In the beginning, it was a product that was very popular in the suburbs, says Patrick Pelonero, the drywaller-turned-cofounder-though he means suburbs in the French sense, a more urban, working-class setting than the American definition. (We spoke through a translator.) Now, everybody knows it and everybody eats it. In 2017, O'Tacos opened 72 new locations in France.
That March, it also decided to come to America. To do so, it set its sights where countless entrepreneurial dreamers had before: New York, that glittering melting pot of big ideas, fusion foods, outsized portions, and quick, tasty, eat-it-with-your-hands grub. O'Tacos seemed perfect for the market. But just 14 months later, as O'Tacos' success continued to skyrocket overseas, its only U.S. location closed.
That failed experiment could serve as a stark lesson-for O'Tacos and for any other aspiring franchises-about just how complicated international expansion is...and how much work must be done to find success.
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Esta historia es de la edición Startups Summer 2022 de Entrepreneur US.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
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How Small Shops Take Big Risks - It's not easy for mom-and-pops to try something new, because they rarely have a safety net to fail.But there are ways to innovate cautiously-as one small business on our list, All My Heart tattoo studio, has found.
The Charlotte, North Carolina, studio is airy and suffused with natural light. In the reception area, there are modular chairs, midcentury couches, and a vase of fresh flowers on a Japanese-influenced cabinet. But the real surprise goes beyond aesthetics. All My Heart's owner, Graham Beech, isn't just playing with a new look; he's trying out a whole new business model. Historically, tattoo shops have wanted to control the clientele, and use the tattoo artist as kind of a cog in the wheel, Beech says. What's different about our business is that the client is the artist, and they have their own individual clients.
5 Ways to Multitask Your Fall - From a corporate office to working from the living room, Emmy Award winner Mario Armstrong has five new products designed to make putting in the hours more enjoyable.
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Speedy Growth Killed My Startup - We seemed to be rocking it-lots of press, major partnerships. Then we learned the harsh consequences of overlooking our customers.
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How to Hire for the Future - Small businesses are struggling to find quality labor. So flip the conversation: Show workers how your business will set them up for opportunity.
Small businesses have a hiring problem. According to the July monthly jobs report from the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), 19% of small businesses rank the inability to find quality labor as the single most important issue facing their company, while 38% reported job openings they could not fill. Overall, 49% reported few or no qualified applicants for the positions they were trying to fill.
Three Pivots to $100 Million - How do you find a working business model? Do it like Rowan-a brand that reinvented itself many times before finally piercing the ear-piercing market
If you have a tween girl, you've probably heard of Rowan. It's the cool brand for piercings, where licensed nurses insert hypoallergenic studs into thousands of ears every day. With more than 500 employees, it's on track to have 65 stores and an annual run rate of $100 million in revenue this year.But in 2017, Rowan was just a fledgling startup with a great idea and a bad business model. It survived because founder Louisa Schneider was willing to pivot, and pivot, and pivot again, until its mission, profit, and market all clicked into place.
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