What were the ingredients that made Yum Yum Donut's acquisition of Winchell's a success?

Lincoln Watase
President, Yum Yum Donut Shops, Inc.

What were the ingredients that made Yum Yum Donut's acquisition of Winchell's a success?

Yum Yum's acquisition of Winchell's was unique in that Yum-Yum and Winchell were so similar; the same types of products the same general locations of stores. As far as advice, in looking back I know the VP of Operations and I personally went and visited every store, took the time to meet with and take to each manager. We thought that was important because we wanted to let the folks in the stores know we cared about them and appreciated and knew how much work it was to manage a store so we wanted to send that message. In addition we deliberately minimized changes if possible to allow for a smother transfer of the acquisition. If there was something we have to change we erred on the side of not having to make that change. Just the sear fact that we were doing this acquisition that was plenty of changes for the employees of Winchell's to be dealing with. So as a general rule we did try and minimize changes and we also in for the planning of the acquisition we tried to think of any and every possible thing that could go wrong so we would be prepared for just about every contingency in the hopes there would never be any surprises given to us. And lastly we used experts. We know how to run donut shops but in doing a large acquisition by all means attorneys that deal with these things on a regular basis as well as consultants, tax attorneys, you know we weren't hesitant to recognize where we really didn't have the expertise and go out and get expert advice.