Doughnut Franchisee Has Olympic Dreams

Herald Tribune:

Dunkin’ Donuts franchisee Marvin Kaplan has more on his mind these days than opening a state-of-the-art restaurant on Stickney Point Road this month.

That store - leaning more toward croissants than jelly buns - will be the prototype for what Kaplan hopes will become a new wave of upscale fast-food restaurants on China’s mainland.

‘We are talking about somewhere in the neighborhood of opening 1,000 stores over there,’ said Kaplan, a frequent business partner of state Sen. Mike Bennett, R-Bradenton. ‘It is probably going to be in the $100 million range for build-out.’

Kaplan is working with the global investment banking firm Lazard Ltd. to raise the dough, and with a Shanghai-based company called Teahouse Partners to select a Chinese strategic partner with real estate muscle.

He has been developing his own vision of turning a yuan on cappuccino for 18 months. The U.S. dollar now can be exchanged for just under 8 of the Chinese units.

Kaplan declined to name names as far as the Chinese partner, but said, ‘We are down to a short list of 3 and hopefully we will know something in the next 60 to 90 days.’

China requires that franchisors operate two stores of their own for a year before franchising out to others, a system that requires the originator of the brand to prove that he has a viable concept.

Kaplan’s somewhat ambitious internal deadline is to get his first Chinese store open in time for the Summer Olympics in 2008. China already is preparing for games, which run Aug. 8 to 24 in a number of cities and the capital, Beijing. More.