THE FREE PRESS SMALL BUSINESS WEEK OCTOBER 20. 2002
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  Quizno’s offers fresh ingredients to hungry market
   There’s a new Quizno’s Subs restaurant opening somewhere in the world every 16 hours. Kim and Kal Gill opened their first franchise here in Prince George at Parkwood Mall two years ago, and followed that up by opening the Spruceland location one year ago. And that, according to Kim, is only the start of more to come.
   “We serve around 1,000 to 1,5000 customers every week,” she said from the brightly decorated Spruceland restaurant. “We know there are still people in the Prince George area who have never tried Quizno’s, and we want to make them our customers too.”
   With a ‘target market’ of the 18 to 35 year-old consumers, Kim says institutions such as the University of Northern British Columbia and the College of New Caledonia help build their customer base. But that’s not to say the Quizno’s sub is not popular with other age groups. In fact, Kim says Quizno’s, because of its affordability and good, fresh, quality food, is popular with families as well as senior citizens.
   On any weekday, Quizno’s is open at 8 a.m. and Kim says its not unlikely to have customers in the store minutes after opening. One of the best sellers is the Classic Italian sub with wine-cured Genoa salami, pepperoni, capi-collo, honey-cured ham, mozarella cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, black olives, red onion and Quizno's secret recipe Red Wine Vinaigrette.
   It’s the recipe that keeps bringing the customers back, she says.
Kal & Kim Gill, owners of Quizno's Subs are there to serve.
   “I think what you will find here that is really different is that we have a real recipe for our sandwiches,” says Gill. “You could go to any sandwich place and build your own, and you could do that too here, but we have the combinations, the recipes that makes our subs better.”
   They also have the oven - the Quizno’s patented conveyor oven - which toasts the buns to perfection, and melds the ingredients into the winning recipe. “1 think our
   customers find that our toasted subs are different from the old cold fast-food stuff. We use only fresh ingredients and yet we serve our customers quickly and efficiently."
   Gill says customer service is at the forefront at both of the Prince George Quizno’s, and because of that service she believes her repeat business and word-of-mouth referrals are increasing. She says the people here have shown their customer
    satisfaction since week-one of the Parkwood store, with the biggest sales in Canada ever during an opening week.
With 20 employees from the ages of 16 to over 60 and years of devotion, Gill says her stores have received significant recognition from the Quizno’s head office, including its Platinum Award, the highest recognition award. “Both our stores received the Platinum Award from Quizno's during the Olympics promotion. Stores were judged on every aspect, from the outside and inside appearance, cleanliness, customer service and food quality.”
Now, the Prince George Quizno’s locations serve as training ground for new franchise owners. With 1,700 stores world-wide, the company is known as one of the most successful franchise businesses today. It all started in Denver in 1981, with the concept of providing fast food that is convenient, affordable and in a carry-out formula, with a fresher and tastier flavour than other fast food. Kim Gill says her success in the sub business has been sweet - lots of hard work, but satisfying. She started making subs for a competitor and then after two years decided to take the plunge into owning her stores. Assistance from Community Futures Development Corporation as well as a Human Resources Canada training program also helped to make the ventures successful.
   Quizno’s caters, and delivers, from both Prince George locations and is open 8 a.m. until 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday and Sunday from 11 a:m. until 8 p.m.
                  Managing Credit Risk Helps Small Business Owners Get Paid...And Sleep At Night
   Today’s entrepreneurs juggle a daily variety of details and challenges critical to running their businesses, from handling customer inquiries to managing a Web site. Perhaps none is more important than keeping an eye on cash flow. During these tough economic times, the question “When am I going to get paid?” is keeping more and more small business owners up at night.
   According to the Small Business Administration, more than 95 percent of U.S. companies are small businesses. Of those companies, nearly 25 percent fail within the first two years, and many fail because of bad debt.
Often, it is a dispute with only one creditor that contributes to the failure of such businesses.
   While extending credit to customers is risky, it’s often a necessity in this credit-driven age. It is manageable, however. The key is to be smart about it. The first step is to regularly check the credit of both existing and future customers before making the decision to extend credit. Ironically, it’s often current customers, rather than new ones, that are the greatest risk.
   Currently, small business owners can check credit by asking customers for references and calling each one on their own, or they can use a service to pull individual credit reports. These reports are valuable, but most are expensive and complicated-designed specifically for big businesses
   with accounting departments.
   Now there’s another option. Intuit and Dun & Bradstreet recently introduced a new credit check service that is specifically designed for small businesses to provide easy-to-use insight into the credit histories of current and future customers. It uses pictures, plain English and industry comparisons to show customers’ payment patterns and the risk of extending credit.
The QuickBooks Credit Check service is integrated into Intuit’s topselling QuickBooks 2002 accounting software. It is simple to use and inexpensive, but more importantly, it incorporates credit checking into a small business owner’s daily routine. For example, there is a continuously updated credit meter at the top of QuickBooks’ invoices that ranks that customer’s credit from green to red to show how risky it is to extend credit to that person. The small business owner can then adjust credit terms accordingly, such as making it “cash on delivery.” Making decisions like this will help business owners better manage their projected revenue and ongoing cash flow, giving many the peace of mind to sleep better at night.
   The service is offered in three different levels of monthly packages, as well as on a pay-as-you-go basis. More information is available at www.quickbooks.com.
 It shouldn't cost to be in the know.
n/oog. Mews
       THE PRINCE GEORGE
    FREE PRESS