Article

Camille's opens first Wal-mart restaurant

Beautiful Brands marks the significant opening of its first Supercenter location.

January 7, 2010 by Valerie Killifer — senior editor, NetWorld Alliance

Camille's Sidewalk CafÃ© has announced the opening of its newest restaurant in a Wal-mart Supercenter in Kissimmee, Fla. The location opened Jan. 18 and marks the first Camille's Sidewalk Cafe to open inside Walmart stores.

InJanuary 2008, Beautiful Brands International announced it had signed an agreement with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to place Camille's franchises in Wal-Mart Supercenters across the United States.

The deal took about two years to manifest and reflects Wal-Mart's committment to serving healthier fare in its Supercenter locations.

"Our agreement with Wal-mart will help us grow the strength of our brand and continue our tremendous growth trend in Florida and other critical regions throughout the country," David Rutkauskas, Beautiful Brands International founder, president and CEO, said.

Since announcing the deal, interest has grown for Camille's franchise locations.

"Our current franchisees love it that we are expanding our reach and considering our leads and sales pipeline," he said. "I believe the Wal-mart agreement has had a direct impact on growing the interest of our brand."

The location was opened by franchisee Trushar Patel and it is his first Camille's restaurant.

Rutkauskas said while the Wal-mart agreement only calls for the opening of Camille's Sidewalk Cafe's in its retail locations, he would not be surprised if Wal-mart expanded the agreement to include other Beautiful brands.

"We're leaving the door open," he said.

Into the future

Beautiful Brands had quite the year in 2009, signing a salad, sushi, BBQ and donut franchise to its roster of restaurants to market and expand worldwide. The company now has 13 total brands on its list, including company-owned Camille's Sidewalk Cafe, Coney Beach and FreshBerry.

Beautiful Brands also has carried that momentum into 2010. Over the next 17 days, the company plans to open five FreshBerry locations in Saudi Arabia.

"The next one to three years will consist of opening new stores and continuing to bring new restaurants under the Beautiful Brands umbrella," Rutkauskas said. "We want to be one of the leading restaurant development companies in the world. We're definitely not going to limit ourselves. We want to grow our company and we have the staff in place to do that."