Emerald City Smoothie and you: a compelling opportunity

If you are looking for a significant franchise opportunity with a low cost of entry and a high upside potential, you may be a great candidate to be an Emerald City Smoothie (ECS) franchise owner.

One of the most important things that set ECS apart from the crowd is its unique brand promise. ECS delivers healthy smoothies with unbeatable taste. When you're getting started, this unique concept results in a shorter time to break even. Even better, over the long run, it means that you own a defensible brand that is very difficult to copy.

We've also built our uniqueness beyond the product. We build customer loyalty everyday through:

• A personal service philosophy that turns our employees into part of our customer's fitness-support team, which keeps customers coming back
• The right supplements for any health goal from weight loss to bulking up
• Smoothie recipes that won us the "best of" smoothie category in a Seattle poll, featuring a unique blending process that creates a smooth, refreshing, but never-watery, taste.
  World-class visual branding and store design that draws customers into your stores and makes selection of high-margin add-on products easy
• Corporate marketing, training, site selection, and quality control services

ECS also features all the benefits offered by franchises in general including a formula for operating a successful business that all but eliminates business mistakes commonly made by new business owners. Today, one out of every three dollars spent by Americans for goods and services is spent in a franchised business (source: Franchise.org website), generating an estimated $1 trillion in the U.S. economy annually. The combination of the franchisor's expertise and your hard work create the potential for a strong business. With a franchise, you are in business for yourself, not by yourself!

Why ECS?

The concept
Emerald City Smoothie is a retail concept that marries taste and good health. At the center of the ECS value proposition is an incredible tasting, 24-ounce smoothie. The best description of our smoothies is that they taste fresh, like just-picked fruit off the tree. Once you try one, it's almost impossible to not come back for more.

A recent study, the ECS Customer Study 2005, by integrated brand experts Parker LePla, supports our claims. Consider these facts:

• 100% of customers indicate that they will buy additional smoothies from ECS in the future
• A large majority of our customers visit our stores three or more times per week
  64% of our customers say being an ECS customer tells the world they are health conscious
• 39% were referred to ECS by a friend
• Customer top-three buying criteria include taste 32%, service 25%, and health 21%
  Finally, ECS scored an average 4.29 on Parker LePla's brand strength on a scale ranging from -5 to +5. A 4.29 places these customers in the Committed level, which is characterized by extreme loyalty, a willingness to pay more than for a competitive product and a desire to tell others about the brand.

This customer behavior makes ECS a strong brand. In addition, the smoothie industry as a whole benefits from America's long-term need to embrace a healthier lifestyle and combat obesity.

Our customers appreciate taste and health