Matthew Corrin, Freshii

breath ofBy Darren Gluckman

Photos courtesy of Freshii

or someone in the restaurant busi-n e s s , M a tt h e w Corrin doesn’t like

to dish. Asked about his fondest recollections from his time as a summer in-tern on the Late Show with David Letterman, a time he describes as “the summer of my life,” he demurs.

“I probably signed a nondisclosure agreement about the things that took place there.”

Did the experience change your appreciation for the show, or for Letter-man himself ? His response is similarly cagey. Firsthand encounters, he suggests, are “always a very different dynamic. I’m not saying that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

Can you name any of the business leaders who have mentored you or influ-enced you in any way?

“I’d rather not.” Okay

then. What TV shows do you watch? “That’s too per-sonal. I think it says a lot about somebody.”

This wariness seems a bit odd, especially given the reams of media coverage—and the accompanying interviews—flowing from his success as founder and CEO of Freshii, the health food chain that’s gone global since its modest in-troduction in Toronto in 2005. But perhaps it’s pre-

f

108 lifestyles magazine spring 2012

Healthy and fast are at the root of

Matthew Corrin’s take-out revolution.

profile Matthew Corrin

fresh(ii) aircisely this wealth of atten-tion that has him slightly on edge, his guard up even at the most innocuous of inquiries. “Every so often,” he reveals toward the end of our chat, “I’ve had an ar-ticle that’s incredibly inac-curate. And I’ll say to my wife, ‘Can you believe they put this in quotes?’ And she’ll say, ‘I’ve heard you say that before.’”

In fact, his initial circum-spection may have some-

thing to do with the fact that I’ve tracked him down, as it were, on a vacation with his family, near Sara-sota, Florida, so it takes him a while to get his head back in the spin game. At one point, he’s got a sleep-ing daughter (one of two) draped across his shoulder. At another, when asked about the origins of the Freshii name, he credits, somewhat endearingly and not entirely credibly, his

wife. “I think, as the story goes, my wife named it. So I think that’s exactly how we came up with it.” (He later explains that she was sit-ting beside him at the time he gave his answer.)

But as befits a former public relations manager for Oscar de la Renta (the gig he landed and held for the next two years after the Late Show summer expired), it isn’t long before he’s art-fully peppering his con-

109lifestyles magazinespring 2012

110 lifestyles magazine spring 2012

versation with key brand-ing concepts—the phrase “fresh and healthy” makes five appearances in one re-sponse to a question about Freshii’s competition—and marketing-speak.

“We have tons of compe-tition across every city we operate in, and at the same time, we have very little competition. We’re a con-venience business model. We’re not a destination-driven business. So people come to us if it’s convenient and they want something fresh and healthy (1). And there’s lots of places that people can get fresh and healthy (2). I think we’re do-ing it in a way that’s higher quality than Subway, which also represents fresh and healthy (3), and with more options and ingredients. And on a scaled-up basis,

when you think of a chain that’s trying to lead with fresh and healthy (4) versus leading with being a burrito place or a yogurt place or a sub place, we’re not any of those things. We’re just a fresh and healthy (5) place you can come to and get a bunch of different types of food. We’re the biggest in North America that does that.”

Indeed, with 50 locations on this side of the Atlantic, and outlets in Austria and Dubai, 500 global employ-ees, and about $50 million in sales last year, Freshii is scaling up at an impressive pace. Although initially re-sistant to the idea of fran-chising, Corrin has come around. Industry-standard

franchising fees are typi-cally in the low six figures, but Freshii’s franchise part-ners pay $30,000 up front, along with 6 percent royal-ties on earnings and 3 per-cent toward advertising. Franchisees aren’t neces-sarily small operators: The first U.S. franchisee was a Chicago-based restaura-teur who has committed to opening 80 locations over a 10-year period. At the mo-ment, Corrin plans to open 700 new Freshii spots, half franchised, half corporate-owned, over the next five years.

Heady stuff for a guy who failed business at the Uni-

versity of Western Ontario (“I didn’t understand it,” he’s said) and who opened his first location (originally called Lettuce Eatery) in Toronto in 2005 without so much as a day’s worth of experience in the restau-rant business.

That first week, in what has become a legendary footnote in the Freshii story, his chef lopped off the tip of his thumb, his kitchen manager—fainting from the sight of blood—broke his nose, and a rogue employee walked off with a bundle of cash. As luck




would have it, that initial location was well chosen. Deep in the heart of the financial district, the high volume allowed the store to “iterate,” as Corrin puts it, and gave it the margins necessary to adjust to the initial growing pains that might have killed off a store in a zone with less traffic.

“If I use my Letterman analogy,” he says, “what I thought I knew and what I actually knew were incred-ibly different. What I did learn is that salads are very lunch-focused and season-

al, and work really well in warm climates and warm weather. When you’re in Toronto, you need to figure out how to make your busi-ness model work because the rent doesn’t get cheap-er in the wintertime.” That realization eventually con-vinced Corrin to shelve the Lettuce name. “The evolu-tion of our menu led us to say we’re more than just salads, and yet we have a name that so connotes sal-ads, and we should recon-sider that before we contin-ue to scale. We opened 10

stores before we changed the name to Freshii.”

But the name wasn’t the only thing that changed along the way.

“We’ve changed so much from store one to store 55,” Corrin says, when asked to identify mistakes he’s made. “We really thought of Toronto as a bit of an incu-bator—launch fast, fail fast, iterate, launch again—and used it as our barometer for what we should do in all these other markets. And I think we probably changed a bit too frequently, at the expense of our guests.”

Those iterations have made Freshii an attractive business, and not just for eating. The privately held company has received ac-quisition offers, Corrin ac-knowledges, but he isn’t prepared to pass the tongs, at least not yet.

“Certainly, the time isn’t right,” he states. And it may not be right for some time. “I will say that the longer I’m in the business, the lon-ger I want to be in the busi-ness.” He could be in it for a while. Only 30, Corrin has been part of a host of Top

Corrin with a line of fresh ingredi-

ents used at freshii stores.

Phot

o by

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30 Under 30 and Top 40 Un-der 40 lists, and he sees his relative youthfulness as an asset. “I’m really fortunate to be a young CEO,” he says. “Being young has allowed me to surround myself with some really success-ful business leaders in the restaurant space.” While he won’t name them, he does allow that he’s had an opportunity to meet with “the CEOs and founders of the five largest restaurant and beverage chains in the world.” One might reason-ably speculate that Howard Schultz is among them, given Corrin’s avowed as-pirations to become “the Starbucks of the fresh food business.”

He lives in Toronto now, but he grew up in Win-nipeg, Manitoba, with his

dentist father, nurse moth-er, a younger brother and a sister. Happy childhood? “That’s really personal,” he objects, though his parents are credited as early inves-tors, and he opens up with some enthusiasm about the company founded by his brother, Adam, which Freshii has partnered with for recruitment purposes. EpicRise is “essentially a recruitment tool for Gen Y,” explains Corrin. When Freshii has a job opening, for example, it may receive hundreds of applications. Applicants are required to complete an online, algorithm-based contest, which is tailored to the open position, and which “shoots out” the top-10 per-

formers for Freshii to then consider.

Despite his poor perfor-mance in business class, Corrin—who graduated with a degree in media rela-tions—has been invited back, not to redo the se-mester, but as a guest lec-turer with an enviable track record in the real world. And for all his initial re-serve, he finally relents on that most revealing of sub-jects: “I think Californica-tion is a great show. And I love The Good Wife, with Ju-lianna Margulies.” Conspic-uously absent is his former employer, Letterman, but one gets the sense that evo-lution, rather than stag-nancy, keeps Corrin’s life fresh.

ABove: Exterior of a freshii store.

Below: a sample wrap from freshii.


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Matthew Corrin, Freshii