Making a Business Franchising Rice Pudding

I was feeling a little hungry for dessert after an evening at a local sports bar. My husband was headed to a local ice cream store when I remembered it had closed and had a new tenant. I believed they had some kind of new dessert so we drove over and saw the sign Miami Rice Pudding. My hubby insisted, "that can't be all they sell."

Of course, he was wrong.

There was a clean , small, quiet store except for a very excitable man and his sister serving the pudding. Sometimes you have a choice of 31 flavors but they are on track to have more than this. More than 31 flavors of rice pudding - how can this be, you may ask. You'd be surprised at all the flavors they have, from key lime to coconut to cinnamon bun. They offered up those plastic tasting spoons for anything we wanted to try, so we sampled, and were pleasantly surprised.

The rice pudding has a smooth, creamy consistency with small chewy rice pieces to provide an interesting texture. As we asked the man behind the counter for additional information, his sweet Texas crude drawl drew us in. He owned the franchise store and had 3-4 local shops and potential for additional western state opportunities.

The company Miami Rice Pudding was started by husband and wife Ken and Linda McEvoy, in Denville, NJ. Ken loves rice pudding and his wife made him some, and kept experimenting. Before long they decided to make a company out of it. Ken's a cop, and Linda's been working on the store since it's inception. The name came about because of Ken's background with crimefighting. The first store was in Livingston Mall in NJ.

So it's good, but why bypass the ice cream shop? Pretty simple, we'd just had a full meal and more calories and fat were not something we needed, just a sweet tooth snack. The owner of the franchise we went to had a horticulture degree and presented the rice pudding pluses, mostly lower fat and some protein, all natural ingredients and even gluten-free to boot! You can also do the "mix-ins" as at ice cream shops, including raisins that would have been a great addition to the "Original". Will it be the next big thing?