The OTC world is full of speculation. Developmental biotechnology companies can sit years away from ever being acquired by a big pharma or bringing a drug to market and that is assuming that the drug in development will be able to roll through all the stages required by the Food and Drug Administration.
Mining and exploration companies obviously have a major set of tasks set before them to ever be generating enough revenue to be self-sufficient and, again, that success is predicated on sizeable strikes and the time and money to extract the materials from the earth’s crust.
Technology companies can spend millions on research and development only to fail. Obviously, a success can reap a large paycheck, but none come quickly and the costs involved to bring developments to fruition can be quite expensive and time-consuming.
Other companies have taken a much more traditional route with a solid business model that can generate revenue on a shorter time frame and still hold high profit margins. Even with a more conventional approach, the road still can be long for most to capture a fair market share.
San Antonio, Texas-based Tootie Pie Company Inc. (OTCQB:TOOT) epitomizes taking a proven business plan and following it to letter to expand the company and generate revenue quickly and efficiently.
Tootie started small by developing a strong brand in the state of Texas and then slowly added distribution agreements with some of the biggest names in the food service business, including the likes of Sysco and U.S. Foodservices, to expand sales across the United States. The Company methodically then inched their way into opening gourmet cafés as an additional mode of revenue.
In a show of business sense, where construction of a typical restaurant from the ground up would cost in excess of $1 million U.S., the Tootie management carefully selected locations in affluent neighborhoods where existing buildings could be renovated and had their first cafés up and running to costs of only approximately $100,000 U.S. A perk to these cost-saving construction strategies is revamping an existing business which brings with it a customer base without having to start from scratch.
Tootie Pie Gourmet Cafés are proving successful as the Company now has six locations with the latest one just being opened in Austin, Texas in the third week of March. Tootie generates revenue through three different avenues; retail, corporate and wholesale, but the retail end is starting to becoming the dominate portion of overall sales thanks to the expanding footprint their cafés have in Texas.
Numbers don’t lie and a look at the press release from Tootie today spells things out quite clearly. Once again, it was announced that sales for the month topped sales for the same month in the year prior. In this latest case, February 2011 sales came in 19% higher than February 2010 (which topped sales for February 2009).
This report came on the heels of last month’s news that January 2011 sales beat January 2010 sales by a whopping 53%; which had topped January 2009. In fact, this is becoming old hat for Tootie as they have been able to issue the same sort of press release each month for nearly the last year and a half.
Commenting on the success, Tootie Pie President and CEO, Don Merrill, stated, "Our Tootie Pie Gourmet Cafés are the centerpiece of our accelerated growth plans, helping us off to a great start for the year. Whenever possible, we are acquiring existing, operating locations that will add significant revenue, as well as a solid customer base, from day one."
Mr. Merrill continued, "Our plan is to shift more sales into higher margin, retail sales and our Cafes play a huge role in that sales shift. For the first time in our Company’s history, retail sales, which include online and corporate, accounted for over 70% of our sales in a given month."
The point in case is that many investors will frantically scramble throughout the Over the Counter exchange looking for the "next Google" or some other type of firm that is poised to change the landscape of any given industry and often times overlook the obvious.
Solid "brick-and-mortar" business models that meet the demands of consumers today may be a bit fewer and further between, but they are still there and, according to the latest data released by Tootie Pie, doing quite well.
