BENSON J. FISCHER

Benson J. Fischer (52) has had an extensive background in a number of businesses over the past thirty three years.  His business experience includes; numerous start ups businesses, turnarounds situations, owning, operating and the construction of dozens of restaurants, manufacturing and distribution (regionally and nationally) of beverages, bakery products, ice cream and frozen yogurt. He has also owned and operated a vending machine company and a real estate brokerage firm.

In 1975, Benson teamed up with his two brothers and founded the Yummy Yogurt frozen yogurt chain which grew from a single store of 600 square feet (with a limited menu) to a dozen large full-scale fast food restaurants with an extensive variety of health food products.  When the first Yummy Yogurt opened, business was brisk, however, as the chill of the cold weather approached, frozen yogurt sales dipped. To generate cash flow, Benson began wholesaling the frozen Yummy Yogurt to local supermarkets by transporting the product using his 1974 Datsun station wagon, utilizing dry ice to keep the yogurt frozen. When the temperatures dropped below freezing, Benson would wear a heavy wool coat and roll down the windows of his Datsun to save on the cost of the dry ice. As the wholesale business grew, Benson purchased a 20 year old freezer truck with hundreds of thousands of miles already on the odometer and after several months grew the business to the point that a local ice cream distributor thought enough of the home grown Yummy Yogurt to take over the distribution.

While operating and expanding the Yummy Yogurt restaurant chain, the Fischer’s purchased the Real Rich Ice Cream Company, a franchise company with 34 franchised stores. Over the following several years the Yummy Yogurt Franchise Company was formed and the existing Yummy Yogurt stores were sold as franchises. Subsequently, the Yummy Yogurt Franchise Company along with the Real Rich Ice Cream Company was sold.  

Following the sale of Yummy Yogurt and the Real Rich Ice Cream Company, Benson went solo and continued in the food industry. He constructed and operated a variety of different restaurant concepts including, Name That Sandwich, Buffalo Bills, Café 57, How Sweet It Is, Bensoni’s Italian Kitchen, Mr. Pepperoni’s, Bagel Boy, Montana’s Steak Houses. In addition, Benson purchased the Gifford’s Ice Cream Company (a Washington D.C. institution since 1920) through a bankruptcy proceeding and subsequently sold the rights to the current operators.

By 1988, Benson his restaurant businesses and became involved in real estate. By early 1989, Benson formed a real estate and business brokerage firm, The Fischer Organization Inc. Over a period of eight years, with 30 employees, the firm orchestrated over 1000 commercial real estate lease and sales transactions, generating nearly $1 billion in revenues for the firm’s clients.

During the real estate crash in the early 1990’s, Benson specialized in real estate workouts by representing banks, landlord and tenants. In addition to the commercial real estate activity, the firm represented a number of national, regional and local franchise companies for a variety of services including site selection, lease negotiation, construction management, and franchise sales.

While operating the real estate brokerage firm, in 1995, Benson created a novelty beer product, Redneck Premium Beer. Over the course of one year, the Beer Company sold millions of bottles of Redneck Beer through 275 beer distributors located in 32 states.  The company was debt free only 45 days from the commencement of production.  Redneck Beer, a novelty product, produced hefty profits through beer sales along with revenues derived from licensing the trademark, “Redneck” to clothing manufacturers.

In 1997 Benson with a group of investors made a $75 million dollar bid to purchase the Palm restaurant chain, unfortunately, the deal was not consummated.  In 1998, Benson purchased the corporately owned Washington D.C. Papa Johns Pizza franchise system with 10 stores. Papa John’s Corporation had been operating the stores and losing tremendous amounts of money in the D.C. market for several years. After only one year, Benson sold the Papa Johns only after he had reorganized the management, renegotiated several leases and turned the company around to become one of the most profitable franchises in the Papa John’s system. 

In early 2001, Benson focused his attention on Montgomery Donut Company, a large regional donut manufacturing company, established in 1946 with a dozen retail outlets. The company was a staple in the Washington metropolitan area and had built a wholesale network of over two thousand customers servicing restaurants, hotels, airlines, and nearly every federal government branch including the White House, the FBI, the Senate, CIA and the House. The company fell on hard times due to lack of management and antiquated equipment after the death of the founder and subsequently entered into bankruptcy.

Benson along with his 76 year old father (who had retired a years earlier was eager to come out of retirement) purchased the assets of Montgomery Donut Company out of bankruptcy in June, 2001. Montgomery Donuts was being pursued by several other bakery groups while in bankruptcy and a bidding war erupted in the bankruptcy process.  Benson, having the experience of purchasing the Gifford’s Ice Cream Company out of Bankruptcy years earlier was able to control the bidding by purchasing all of the unsecured creditor debt at .07 cents on the dollar which resulted in staying off the other bidders, thus being able to purchase the company at a fraction of the book value.

Immediately following the purchase, Benson restored the quality of the products that had diminished due to the former companies’ lack of funding. With his extensive managerial background, the payroll was slashed while new systems and controls were implemented that resulted in a reduction of utilities, food cost, production costs, transportation costs and various other expenses. In addition, the entire infrastructure was rebuilt and the company began to produce a positive cash flow within 90 days of the purchase. In less than a year of the purchase, an entire new line of bakery products were introduced for wholesale, retail, vending, food service along with a franchise program which was being prepared for the expansion of the Montgomery Donut retail operations. 

While the company was growing additional manufacturing space was required. Negotiations were underway to purchase the 160,000 square foot Safeway owned bread and roll manufacturing plant in Landover Maryland and enter into a long term supply agreement with Safeway to continue to manufacturer bread and rolls for Safeway.  The Company would also supply Safeway with donuts, bagels, danish, cakes etc. Simultaneously, negotiations were ongoing with the state of Maryland to fund the project with an Industrial Revenue Bond. Unfortunately, less than 19 months after the purchase of the company, an unusually heavy snowstorm caused the roof to collapse on the 25,000 square foot manufacturing facility located in Rockville, Maryland which caused the company to cease operations.

A management decision was made not to rebuild the facility due to the extended time it would take, and chose rather to use co-packers to manufacture products for a newly formed company, Montgomery Distributors, Inc. which now supplies companies such as Starbucks on the East cost.  While under Benson’s direction, Montgomery Distributors has grown 600 percent in less than two years and the company’s profits have grown at the same growth rate.

While in a supermarket in 2003, Benson noticed a Coinstar coin counting machine which counts customers coins for a fee. After questioning the store manager about customer usage, Benson was intrigued and began researching the coin counting business. His research had revealed that Coinstar was the only company in the United States in the business of providing coin counting machines to over 13,000 supermarkets. After several months, Benson had located a company that made a superior coin counting machines normally found in banks and armored car companies. Benson developed the remote computer system which was far superior to Coinstar’s, designed the attractive kiosk display along with a business plan to compete directly with Coinstar.

Benson met with several supermarket chains and made his first deal with the Shoppers Food & Pharmacy chain in the Washington/Baltimore market. Shoppers Food & Pharmacy had Coinstar machines operating in all of the stores processing over $35 million in coin processing services annually. Shoppers agreed to replace the existing Coinstar machines in the stores with Benson’s Coin X Change machines in 2004 after excepting Benson’s offer to double the commission paid by Coinstar and superior equipment with much less maintenance that also offered real time data from each machine.  Shopper’s is owned by Supervalu, the largest supermarket operator in the country, operating over 2000 supermarkets under several banners. Shoppers was Coinstar’s highest per store coin counting account in the entire Supervalu system and the success of Coin X Change had other Supervalu chains extremely interested in replacing their Coinstar machines with Coin X Change machines.

The success of the Coin X Change program with Shoppers had a reverberating effect and Coin X Change replaced Coinstar machines in other supermarket chains as well. Benson was negotiating with several other SuperValu supermarket chains along with another large multi banner supermarket conglomerate, Royal Ahold.  Royal Ahold operates over 1500 supermarkets throughout the country and Benson was angling to replace the Coinstar machines operating in Royal Ahold with his Coin X Change machines.

Benson implemented a pilot program with one of Royal Ahold chains, Giant Food in the Washington/Baltimore market that produced excellent results. Coinstar realizing that  Coin X Change was strong aggressive competitors, purchased Coin X Change in 2007.