Mama Fu's: Raving Brands' Asian concept takes a 'wok' on wild side with aggressive franchise growth plan

Nation's Restaurant News, Jan 31, 2005 by Amy Spector

Leave it to a creative bunch of Southerners to name a pan-Asian fast-casual restaurant after someone's mama.

"Coming out of the South, we had to have 'mama' in the name," states Darin Kraetsch, executive vice president of Mama Fu's corporate parent. Atlanta-based Raving Brands. "And it made us laugh," he adds.

Mama Fu's Asian House, which first lit its woks in June 2003, is another brainchild from Martin Sprock, the franchisor spearheading Raving Brands, whose expanding stable of concepts encompasses Moe's Southwest Grill, Planet Smoothie, PJ's Coffee and Wine Bar, and Doc Green's Gourmet Salads. As with other Raving Brands enterprises, Mama Fu's is designed to be a purely franchised concept, with 20 sites already up and running, only one of which is corporate-owned.

In the super bowl of pan-Asian fast-casual cuisine, the playoffs have come down to essentially three brands. They are San Clemente, Calif.-based Pick Up Stix, the approximately 100-unit division of Carlson Restaurants Worldwide; Pei Wei Asian Diner, the 53-unit subsidiary of P. F. Chang's China Bistro, based in Scottsdale, Ariz.; and Mama Fu's, according to industry observers.

Mama Fu's, the youngest of the three, has trailed its two bigger competitors in unit counts. But in the past year, expansion at Mama Fu's has heated up faster than one of its stir-fries. According to Alan Woods, corporate vice president of operations, the chain anticipates a rollout of three to four stores monthly for the foreseeable future, along the lines of sibling Moe's Southwest Grill.

Although corporate sources decline to reveal all of their franchisees and franchise commitments, they do admit the brand will enter six new states in 2005, after having established itself in Georgia, Florida, New York, and North and South Carolina since inception. Franchise deals are generally in the seven-unit range, corporate vice president Matt Andrew says. The new markets represent more than 200 additional stores for the brand, if all franchisees fulfill their deals.

To accommodate that growth, the chain operates a franchise training center at corporate headquarters in Atlanta. There development partners undergo three weeks of instruction, Woods says. "We're food-focused," he explains. "Everyone learns how to cook on a wok. We designed Mama Fu's around an open kitchen because of the energy you get from the wok line."

To punch up that energy, cooks on the exhibition wok line shout out "Come to Mama" when customers enter the restaurant, similar to the "Irasshaimase" [welcome] greeting that customers at sushi bars usually receive.

Such details are meant to amuse and entertain the clientele because, as Woods describes it, "laughter is the theme of the restaurant."

From each unit's bold color scheme of red, gold and purple to the custom-designed artwork that includes the word "laughter" in five languages and the 1980s rock-and-roll music, Mama Fu's buzzes with a high-energy vibe, Kraetsch says. "What does '80s music have to do with the food?" he points out, conceding there is no logical connection. "We don't act like restaurateurs," Kraetsch asserts.

"We're not true restaurateurs; we're just a bunch of guys and gals who like to eat out," he says, noting that the group also likes to provide a place for their customers--referred to internally as "raving fans"--that is lively and fun. "We're a young, passionate group," he enthuses, labeling his colleagues as "Type A's." "One of the true secrets behind Raving Brands is we don't take ourselves seriously."

Raving Brands keeps one corporate store for each brand, and "we do R&D [at the corporate level] but we base it on more than one data point," Andrew asserts. "Everything has a very methodical approach."

Each store has approximately 80 seats and 35 employees. Takeout represents up to 35 percent of sales, Woods estimates, but the restaurants do not offer delivery. "We focus on the customers inside," he says. Mama Fu's, however, has begun to emphasize catering, he notes, with plans to drive that business "to 5 to 10 percent of sales."

Although the management team members may not consider themselves typical restaurateurs, their franchisees are. The wok-cooking requirement brings a slightly more restaurant-savvy development partner to the Mama Fu's brand than to Raving Brands' other concepts, Woods observes. And while high-profile operators like former Arby's franchisee and Sybra executive Steve Smith have struck deals for several of the company brands, "less than 50 percent" of Mama Fu's franchisees also license the Moe's Southwest Grill brand, for example, Woods says.

The concept initially was called Mama Fu's Noodle House but the name was changed to Mama Fu's Asian House in 2004. "Only about 20 percent of the menu was noodles. [The name] was not a reflection of what our menu was," Woods says. "We liked the noodle house mystique," he adds, but "we thought we were kind of limiting ourselves." Still, noodle dishes account for about 50 percent of sales, he admits; the restaurant menu has changed about three times since the concept was launched, he notes.