Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory conception was like that of a coin toss, "It came down to either a car wash or a chocolate shop,"(Franklin E. Crail). Franklin E. Crail, the founder and CEO of RMCF, use to own CNI Data Processing, Inc in Newport Beach, California. A thriving company specializing in billing software for the cable television industry. Crail and his wife wanted to raise a big family in a small town so the decision to move to Durango, Colorado was made. Initially once Crail knew he wanted to get into the confectionery business he wanted to contact SEE's Candy to open up a store but the company didn't franchise. on Memorial Day in 1981 Franklin E. Crail opened his first Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory shop on Durango's Main Street in Colorado. …show more content…
From there RMCF had it's ups and down, expectally in 1992 when they had a loss of 34,000 USD. in Crail recovered beautiful in 1995 being up in revenue by 13.9M USD, landing him one of Chain Stone Age's Entrepreneurs of the Year 95'. By 1996 there was 162 stores, with only 45 being company-owned, from California to South Carolina. It wasn't till the 2000 that RMCF crossed oncens with it'sRMCF signing a franchisee in the United Arab Emirates. In 2002 the company introduced it's 250-sq ft kiosk concept for locations where it's traditional 1,000 sq ft shop were not feasible. Although these kiosk did not include cooking area's it allow the chocolate factory to open stories in high end areas. Today Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory has been listed on Forbes America's list of 200 Best Small Companies and in Entrepreneur magazine top candy Franchise 500 list. With over 390 stories in 7 countries, 303 in United States of America, 62 in Canada, 15 in South Korea, 5 in Japan, 4 in United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia and 2 in the Philippines RMCF continues to grow as a confectionery