With close to 300 franchised restaurants in Canada and the United States, revenues of $645 million and an annual growth rate of 21% in 2006, Boston Pizza owns an impressive slice of the casual dining market in Canada.
Now partners Jim Treliving (above, right) and George Melville plan to duplicate that success in the oil change business.
Late last spring, Treliving, a one-time RCMP officer, Melville, a former accountant, and Mike Cordoba, Boston Pizza’s chief executive officer, bought a controlling interest in Mr. Lube from the company’s president and founder Ted Ticknor, who died from prostate cancer last year.
Treliving says they were friends with Ticknor, sat on various boards together and the companies often got together for charity golf tournaments. “They were in a completely different business from us, but it’s also very similar to us,” says Treliving, of running a franchised operation.
Boston Pizza opened its first restaurant in Edmonton in 1964. Treliving and Melville bought up a number of franchises beginning in 1974, and in 1983, raised $3.5 million to buy the franchise rights to Boston Pizza’s 40 outlets.
Since then, their vision has never wavered-to be the best franchisor in the industry-a vision, that also happens to fit in nicely with Mr. Lube.
Treliving says that while they don’t own 50% of Mr. Lube, they are calling the shots. “We do have control of the decision making at the top and that to me is the key to it,” he says. “Both George and I have always been in the situation where we want to control our own destiny, so we wanted some control at the level of operations and that’s what we’ve got.”
Treliving says soon after investing through their company the T&M Group, they brought in Paul Healey to run Mr. Lube. The goal now, he says, is to build a strong company with great franchisees and plenty of room to grow.
