Matthew Corrin's Success Story

Founder of Freshii

Matthew Corrin is twenty eight years old man who is hard-working and motivated to reach his goals in life. If you take a quick look into his reasons for living, you will find that he is a great study in Generation Y. One of his main goals in life is to spread Freshii, which is a concept he visualized to different corners of the world and to become as renowned as Howard Schultz. The mission of Freshii, as he sees it, is to make sure that fresh food that is fast and custom build is served in an environment that is sustainable. The varieties that are offered in the menu range from burritos filled with choice of fillings, sandwiches and salads.

Freshii was launched by Corrin in 2005 after he completed a stint in New York City where he worked for the designer, Oscar de la Renta in public relations. He observed, while he was in the city that there were many food bars and hit upon the idea of branding one such chain so that he could create another “Starbucks” with fresh foods.

This was his company plan which he set about carrying out. In 2005, Corrin succeeded in opening the first Freshii unit in Toronto though he was a native of Winnipeg, Ontario. Till such time, he had never worked in a restaurant or had any experience with retail type of environment.

The first day saw a chain of disasters. The head chef had to be rushed to emergency as he chopped off a portion of his thumb. The chef who worked under the head fainted when he saw blood. Corrin had to get to work and took the assistance of his girlfriend who is today his wife. Both of them began to chop the lettuce, cook chicken and ensure that they were able to come up with the right foods.

Matthew Corrin has signed up to develop nearly 300 stores in 2009. He plans to develop all of them and 60 are already nearing completion. Matthew Corrin admitted that working in this business was a matter of hard work and one did not have to be rocket scientist to get the business off the ground. Hard work was the key. The restaurant became very popular and within two years he was able to open eight different locations that were corporate-owned. He then decided to take the business to a higher level of expanding across the U.S. Quice a success story, uh? :)

Matthew was then able to find angel investors to help with the idea of expansion across the U.S. Once he found three investors, he moved his family temporarily to Chicago which was where the first U.S Freshii store was introduced.

Matthew Corrin has been able to make his dream come true by expanding the Freshii brand across the world in the last five years. 2010 was the year when he decided whether he has made it or not. By then different units opened all over the Middle East, Vienna in Austria and the United States. He explains that it does not matter if you cannot have a unit on every street corner. You just have to launch the initiative and find the place convenient for the purpose.