Now members of this Hi-Line clan are as much married to franchising as they are to farming.

Kyle and Travis Nielsen have signed a 50/50 partnership with Cromwell Corp., of Denver to open 400 Grains of Montana restaurants in the next five years.

"They're providing the flour and the grains. We're providing the knowledge, so it's really a natural partnership," Tom Wilscam said.

Wilscam and his partner and friend, Gary McGill, started Cromwell Corp. in 1998 so they could use their 75 combined years of food industry experience to help people like the Nielson family get started.

Two years ago, the Nielsen brothers decided to open a restaurant featuring grains they grow on their Nashua farm. Having never run a restaurant, they paid a one-time consulting fee to Cromwell Corp., to help them set up the Billings restaurant at 926 Grand Ave.

The business worked so well, they decided to franchise the concept.

"The products have been so well-received, we're onto something special and are starting new business lives," Kyle Nielsen said. He manages the restaurant while Travis farms in Nashua.

Turnkey help

Cromwell provides turnkey help - finding a location, negotiating leases, setting up the store, hiring and training staff and day-to-day support. Grains of Montana franchises will be sold in Montana first in Bozeman, Kalispell and Missoula, while the concept is peddled nationally.

"Back East, there's a mystique about wheat and Montana," Wilscam said. "I think we can make a great story out of it."

The lunch hour crowd filled every table Wednesday, with people waiting on sofas for food.

The original concept was that both brothers would continue to farm and hire a manager for the restaurant.

"Then Travis and I realized that we've taken on a much larger project than we anticipated and one of us had to be here every day," Kyle Nielsen said.

So, Travis, his wife, Alicia Nielsen, and their three children stayed up on the Hi-Line, farming almost 15,000 acres.

Kyle, his wife, Kathy, and their three children moved to Billings to run the restaurant. After taking their youngest daughter to kindergarten, Kathy helps with the lunch rush hour. She also is developing desserts. One sampling was a Pumpkin Roll with sour cream filling and a moist "Better Than Sex" chocolate cake.

"I'll need to rename that," she laughed.

Dramatic changes

Taking a breather after the crunch of lunchtime customers, the Nielsens reflected, a bit sadly, on the dramatic changes in their lives this year.

Yes, they've got a successful restaurant with the promise of unbelievable expansion. However, they reflected on the move that whisked them away from friends and family in northern Montana.

"He was supposed to coach basketball in Glasgow. I was supposed to coach volleyball," Kathy Nielsen said. "We left a lot in a small, close community."

She is a Hall of Fame college volleyball player at Valley City State University in North Dakota.

Kyle yearns to farm for a month in the spring and a month or two each fall, so he's training an employee to eventually take over more management duties. "I'd ultimately like to get back home to help my brother with the seeding and the harvest," he said. "Working the farm alone made it hard on him and his family."

Kyle Nielsen has had to trade the solitude of his tractor and combine cab to manage employees. At the farm, he and Travis bossed five or six employees during harvest. Now he's managing 30 people and that's been his hardest transition.

"Coming from a farm background, it was a pretty hard learning to deal with the staff and all the different personalities," he said.

Dining trends

As Americans live busier lives, they eat out more often and want quicker service. The Grains of Montana concept fits that trend, Wilscam said, by offering "fast casual" food. Customers order at a counter and then take a little sign with their names on it to a table where the food is delivered.

"It's got good food and a great atmosphere, but you can eat at your own pace," he said. "And you can get out of here with a $7 check."

Bread and bagels are baked fresh daily and sold to go. The breakfast, lunch and dinner menu offers sandwiches, salads, soups, pizzas baked in a stone oven and beer and wine.

"That's the highest quality wheat," Kyle Nielsen said. "It's not bleached white flour. You can see the bran in a natural state."

The décor includes a gas-fired fireplace faced with a ledge stone. Walls are covered with pictures of the Nielsen farm and farm toys customers can buy.

"Tonka Toys will sell like crazy in our gift shop," Wilscam said.

The concept is being fine-tuned before the franchise is launched. The Grains of Montana sign is one target because it doesn't specifically say the business is a café and bakery.

"I can't tell you how many times people have come in here and said, 'What do you do? I drove by and I thought you made beer,' " Wilscam said.

The Grand Avenue store costs $1.3 million, although that is a special deal, Wilscam said.

He developed the décor and menu, found the land and the building for the Nielsens and had them buy an adjoining property so the business would have enough parking.

Other franchises will lease the real estate, he said, so startup costs will be much lower.

"The costs for these future franchises will be $400,000 more typically," he said.

In return, Wilscam said each Grains of Montana location should gross $1 million a year.

"If this doesn't do $1 million, we've made a mistake," he said.

The Cromwell concept

Wilscam and McGill named their consulting business after Oliver Cromwell, the British statesman known for integrity. Each year, he and his partner consult with about 18 business people who want to start restaurants.

Reciting national food industry statistics, Wilscam said 82 percent of inexperienced people who open restaurants fail the first year because "they don't know what they don't know."

If they buy into a franchise and use other people's expertise, 86 percent succeed for 10 years or more.

In addition to the Grains of Montana deal, Wilscam and McGill are starting a Mexican restaurant chain called Juan's Mexicali. One restaurant has opened in Milwaukee and six more are being built.

The Wilscam and the McGill children grew up together in Denver. His partner's daughter, Jill McGill, plays on the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour and she's the reason Wilscam said he swore off golf.

"I quit playing golf when as a 12-year-old, Jill beat my by 10 strokes," he laughed. "But then everybody beats me by 10 strokes."

Besides having a solid business contract, Wilscam and Kyle and Kathy Nielsen seem to genuinely like each other.

"We're from totally different backgrounds, but I think our ethics are the same," Kyle Nielsen said. "And I think that's why we are so compatible."

Source:Billings Gazette