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By Richard Rys
To the average visitor, the view from Roger Falloon’s window is less than spectacular, and that’s being generous. Sitting inside his third floor office somewhere in a Trevose, Pennsylvania, industrial park, the Vice President of Operations for Rita’s Water Ice can gaze out across a parking lot dotted with trees and watch cars snake up a road leading to Old Lincoln Highway. It’s not an inspiring vista, but to hear the 33-year-old describe it, you’d think he could peek around his PC and see the Grand Tetons.
“When we first moved here, I admit, I spent some time just staring out the window,” he says with a laugh, recalling his old windowless digs before the flavored-ice empire moved its headquarters, nicknamed the “Cool Support Center,” here two years ago. “Just seeing the sunshine is a great thing.”
For Falloon, the change of perspective was refreshing, much like the frozen treats he’s been selling since joining the company in 1997.
The scenery is the least of what has changed for Rita’s in the past few years. From its launch in 1984 as a way for Philadelphia firefighter Bob Tumolo to make some extra money on the side, Rita’s became a powerhouse company with franchises all across the Delaware Valley, rising up into that rarified branding air reserved for local treasures like Tastykake. And like Xerox, whose name is synonymous with the service they provide, the Rita’s name is now bigger than the product they sell. If you’re from around here and crave a water ice on a sweltering summer day, chances are good you’ll say, “Let’s get a Rita’s.”
In 2005, the company’s philosophy of slow, controlled growth changed radically when Tumolo sold Rita’s to McKnight Capitol Partners, a franchise operator whose chairman had decades of experience running everything from Wendy’s to Baskin Robbins Ice Cream. At that time, there were 321 Rita’s locations, most of which were in the tri-state area and Maryland. Today, there are 560 stores across 17 states, as far south as Florida and as far west as Texas, with total sales in excess of $100 million. Falloon swears he’s never met anyone who doesn’t like his product once they’ve tried it.
“When people taste it, their eyes light up,” he says. “I call it ‘the Rita’s moment.’”
But that’s the rub—how do you convince a dad from Dallas or a family from Boca Raton to try Rita’s when they don’t know what lies inside those red-and-white-striped awnings? Falloon illustrates the challenges his franchisees face: “People come up to the window and say, ‘Can I get spaghetti and meatballs?’” As Rita’s celebrates its 25th anniversary and continues to expand across the country, it’s Falloon’s job to help each new location figure out how to give their customers a new perspective on water ice, and inspire Rita’s moments of their own.
Roger Falloon ’97 is what’s known by Philadelphia standards as a bona fide “guy from the neighborhood”—grew up in Mayfair, went to Father Judge High School, then on to Holy Family University, and never spent more than a family vacation’s worth of time away from home. So in 1999, when Rita’s deployed him to Ohio at age 23 to spend a year whipping their Columbus store into shape, it was a culture shock for both him and his new neighbors. It took Falloon some time to get used to strangers saying hello for no particular reason at the grocery store. Likewise, the concept of Rita’s was foreign to most of his customers.
“They’d see the stripes and ‘Italian’ and think we were a pizza shop,” he says. “Multiple times a day, I’d have guests that didn’t know what we were. It taught me how you take a product that people in Philadelphia are familiar with into a new area. It’s not an overnight thing.”
Helping Rita’s cement a presence in Ohio was a weighty responsibility for Falloon, who was then only two years removed from his business classes at Holy Family. During his senior year, he attended a campus job fair where Rita’s was recruiting. By coincidence, he already had a connection to the company—a friend and classmate of his, Michelle Tumolo ’96, was the daughter of Rita’s founder, Bob Tumolo. As Falloon learned when he met the elder Tumolo for his job interview, he’d already made an impression—Bob remembered him as one of the kids feeling a bit under the weather the day after Michelle’s 21st birthday party.
“It made the interview a little less comfortable,” says Falloon, who can laugh about it now, mostly because he got the job.
What shined through in his job interview, and what still motivates him today, is Falloon’s genuine love of the product.
“The thing that drew me to Rita’s was that it’s such a great brand,” he says. “In Northeast Philadelphia, water ice is a dime a dozen. Growing up, the thing that was special was when we went to Rita’s. Instead of [your parents saying] ‘Here’s a dollar, get out of my hair, go to the deli,’ we’d all get in the car and go to the store. Good memories were always associated with Rita’s.”
Bob Tumolo remembers being impressed by Falloon during that slightly awkward job interview.
“Roger just had desire,” he says. “He wanted to work hard and learn the business.”
Enthusiastic and affable, the smiling, 6’2” Falloon was, and still is, like a walking, talking billboard. To him, Rita’s water ice isn’t just a treat, it’s part of the fabric of his childhood. As an eager 23-year-old proselytizing for the brand in Ohio, Falloon could recite its history. He knew that Tumolo started the company as a way to supplement his income as a firefighter, and how Tumolo bought water ice machines from a South Philadelphia vendor, with one caveat—the man would have to pass along his secret recipe, too. Tumolo and his mother, Elizabeth, spent days experimenting with flavors, how much fresh fruit to use in each batch, and ways to make their water ice smooth and creamy. Their first store, a walk-up window on Bristol Pike in Bensalem, was actually the front porch of a woman’s house, and the owner, who still lives there today, could open her front door into the shop and ask for a lemon water ice.
Tumolo named the company after his wife, Rita, and made $13 in sales on his first day in 1984, but finished with $70,000 by the end of his first year. By 1987, with help from his brother, John, he expanded to three locations, and what began as a side venture quickly became the family business.
“I worked for Rita’s since I was 10, when my dad opened the first store,” says Michelle Tumolo, Senior Associate Director of Undergraduate Admissions for Holy Family. “We often talk about how that was what our family revolved around. In the beginning, my dad put a lot of hours into getting the company running and establishing himself in the area. Sometimes we’d wait until midnight to have family dinner together. It was a lot of work, but it was fun, too.”
Five years after he sold his first water ice, Tumolo began franchising Rita’s across the Delaware Valley. He kept the menu small and as he expanded into Ohio and south to Maryland, one rule was sacrosanct—any ice that was 36 hours old was considered sub-par, and must be thrown out. That’s one of the reasons you’ll never find Rita’s in the freezer of your local supermarket or the corner deli. During Falloon’s year in Ohio, he made sure the product was fresh and the service was swift. But his secret weapon then, as it still is for Rita’s franchises everywhere, was the free water ice coupon.
“We gave away an obsessive amount of free coupons,” Falloon says, “to the point where they still get coupons that I gave out. That was our strategy. We just wanted people to try it.”
When Falloon returned home to the Rita’s headquarters, he rose quickly through the company ranks, and credits his experience in Ohio as the key to his growth.
“It gave me tremendous insight into the business, and taught me all the operational nuances about running the store,” he says.
It also gave him credibility with the Rita’s franchisees, who he works closely with today, not just locally, but across the country.
“I don’t think that I know everything about running a store, but I know the pain a franchise partner would feel when someone calls out five minutes before they’re supposed to come in, or you have to recover after your busiest day of the year. It raises your credibility level when you know the things they have to do on a daily basis.”
Falloon’s empathy toward the franchise owners proved invaluable in 2005. Tumolo felt he’d taken Rita’s as far as he could and was looking forward to a new chapter in his life—preferably one with less stress and more time off. That year, Rita’s was sold to McKnight Capital Partners, a franchise company with a more aggressive business plan. Whereas Tumolo preferred the slow, steady approach to expansion, the new Rita’s owners saturated the markets they were already successful in, and pushed forward into new states that didn’t know Italian ice from Italian leather (it’s worth noting that in South Philadelphia, where Tumolo grew up, the product was always called water ice, but in some areas, such as New York, it’s known as Italian ice).
That first year, Rita’s partnered with 109 new franchises; the following year, that number more than doubled. New stores opened in North Carolina, Virginia, and other states that had never seen a Rita’s, and where the company was already popular, Rita’s saturated those markets.
“The culture of the company changed pretty dramatically,” says Falloon, who adds that expansion has not come at the expense of quality. “I’m very protective of the product. Whenever a Philadelphia company is sold, everyone says it won’t be the same. They said that about Peanut Chews when that brand was sold. There’s not much we do the same today that we did five years ago, but our recipes are the same. We’ve just come up with more efficient ways to produce the product.”
One thing that hasn’t changed is the challenge new franchises face in states where Rita’s is far from a household name. South Jersey native Annie Bobenrieth and her husband were visiting friends in Palm Beach on a sweltering day in 2007 and realized there was no Rita’s nearby to provide the frosty relief they were craving. Like Falloon, Bobenrieth grew up on the product, and after attending a Rita’s recruiting session, her family was sold on opening one of their own. The Bobenrieths picked a location in Boynton Beach, moved with their two young children to Florida, and on the day of their grand opening—no one came.
“I kind of panicked,” Bobenrieth says. “People had no idea what Rita’s was, or Italian ice. It was like speaking Japanese.” Bobenrieth swallowed her fear that she’d made a huge mistake and stuck to her business model, handing out 10,000 free ice coupons and visiting two schools a day to partner with PTA groups. The plan worked, and today, the Bobenrieths own two more Rita’s in Florida. Sales at their newest location in Lake Worth ranked in the company’s top ten after being open for just a month.
Unlike the Bobenrieths, Harry Jones had never heard of Rita’s when he noticed an ad in a local Atlanta newspaper for a franchising opportunity. In 2006, he attended two seminars, then flew to Trevose with his son to meet the top brass and sample the product (Rita’s had sent ice to those seminars from Philly, but by the time it got to Georgia, Jones’s son thought it was “disgusting”—more proof that the 36-hour freshness rule is essential). Jones sampled some fresh ice, met with Falloon and other Rita’s executives, and in June 2007, opened the first Rita’s in his state.
“Everyone says, ‘I wonder what it would have been like to open the first McDonald’s,” says Jones, who now owns three Rita’s in the Atlanta area. “This was an opportunity to do that. This is our third season, and we still have the same challenges, like ‘What’s Rita’s? Chicken?’ But you give them a great product and great service and you make them want to come back.”
With the national economy still on life support, Falloon says Rita’s is still expanding, thanks to the trickle-down effect that’s seen sales plunge at mid-to-high-end food chains, while profits at more affordable, fast-food outlets stay strong.
“People trade down in tough economic times,” Falloon says. “People will cook at home, but will go out for a treat afterward. We’re benefiting from that.”
Jones credits the company’s attitude, and Falloon, for Rita’s continued growth.
“Roger is really passionate about what he does. Rita’s is passionate about our success. I can call Roger on a weekend and he’ll call back in an hour. It’s not a traditional franchise relationship.”
As for any concern that Rita’s lost some of its magic after it was sold, Bobenrieth says the spirit that the Tumolos instilled remains strong.
“It’s like a big family. The CEO, Jim Rudolph, has already been here four times this year. Roger is a tremendous help. It’s like a mom-and-pop feeling.”
Back in his office at the Cool Support Center, Falloon talks about the new frontier for Rita’s—Texas, which is the furthest west the company has ventured. Their first store in that state opened in a Dallas suburb in April, and Falloon hopes to have as many as four locations there by the end of the year. Now, when a new store debuts, they give away free Italian ice for a week; some locations have given away as many as 10,000 ices in those seven days. There’s also the first day of spring, when every Rita’s hands out free cups of their flavored ice.
“We pretty much own that day from a PR standpoint,” Falloon says. “We have high school kids doing scavenger hunts for how many Rita’s they can get to in a day. But we’re still doing sales, because people are still buying stuff, and those people are going to come back. The key to the growth of this brand is educating people who’ve never been to a Rita’s.”
Falloon still marvels at a phenomenon he noticed during his own education. While working on his MBA, Falloon found himself in classes with employees from some of the biggest companies in Philadelphia, ranging from Comcast to major banks. When those students introduced themselves, hardly anyone noticed.
“As soon as I said where I worked, I got 15 minutes worth of questions,” Falloon says. “Every single class. It was unbelievable. That showed me how powerful the Rita’s brand is. When I tell people where I work, I get such a positive reaction. I never hear, ‘That must stink.’ It’s always, ‘That’s awesome.’”
Despite the unimpressive view from Falloon’s office window, he couldn’t agree with them more. Success for Falloon has always been about perspective—whether he was showing Bob Tumolo his professional side during his job interview, seeing the company from the eyes of his franchisees in Ohio, helping new owners show their customers what Rita’s is about, and today, helping the company realize its vision of taking Rita’s to places it has never been before. From where he’s sitting now, Falloon likes what he sees.