381: The 12-Month Process Behind Turning a Childcare School Into a Franchise With Krisana Puccio

What if your next growth move isn’t another childcare location—but a whole new business model? Krisana Puccio shares how Pineapple School grew from one bilingual, family-centered child care program into a three-campus operation with a franchise strategy designed for sustainable growth.

Kate Woodward Young and Krisana explore childcare expansion, franchising, business systems, EOS, leadership, and scalable operations, including what it takes to build the legal, financial, marketing, and operational foundation for growth. If you’re a childcare owner or director wondering whether your successful program could become something bigger, this episode offers an honest look at what it takes to scale without losing what makes your school special.

Learn more about our guest: www.pineappleschool.com

www.ownapineappleschool.com

www.linkedin.com/in/krisana-puccio 

Check out this episode's sponsor:  tryplayground.com/partnerships/childcareconversations

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Transcript

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Childcare Conversations 0:00

Welcome to Child Care Conversations, the podcast where early childhood leaders like you get real-world strategies, honest talk, and a whole lot of support. Whether you're running one center or many, we're here to help you lead with confidence and clarity. This episode is brought to you by this quarter's sponsor, Playground, the all-in-one child care management software. We're all about managing monkeys and saving you time at your center. With this platform, you can. We're proud to partner with a team that's as committed to your success as we are. Learn more at tryplayground.com. Now, let's get into today's conversation. One we think you're really going to love.

Kate Woodward Young 0:47

Welcome back to today's conversation. And, you know, again, I love our Texas connections. And so today we went all the way to San Antonio to find today's guest. And Chrisana is going to share with us about not only her program, but hopefully a little bit about her journey into franchising. And a lot of us who are listening are owners and directors, and we might go, yeah, I've got a school that's pretty successful. Maybe I'll open a second location. Well, hopefully you'll get a nugget or two of maybe why taking it to that next level might be worth something to consider. So why don't you share with us a little bit about your journey here? Because it's an interesting story. And then tell us a little bit about the school's philosophy itself.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Sure. Thank you. So I um my father is from Costa Rica. My mother is from Ohio. Um, but I was not it. So my dad my father spoke Spanish speaking, but I was not raised in a Spanish-speaking household. Um, we just always spoke English. Um when I was in high school and through college, I had this itch to really learn Spanish. But even though I would still I did a couple of study abroad programs, I just was never successful in actually becoming fluent. Um, so a couple years after graduating and kind of working in the real world, I decided to go for an MBA in Costa Rica because I thought I'll get an MBA and I will learn Spanish because it was a two-year program where you had to live on campus. And um, so I I went and I did that. And I yes, I I finally became fluent. I also um met my husband there. He's from Peru. We got married right after graduating, moved back to San Antonio, got corporate jobs. Um his he did not speak Spanish, uh, sorry, English. So um he kind of had the roles were reversed when we moved back here and and he was learning English um while working, which was which was very challenging for him. Um meanwhile, we both were like entrepreneurs at heart. We came from entrepreneurial families, and um we were always brainstorming about businesses that we could start. And so we started um we would literally go every Sunday uh and have breakfast and and just talk about different ideas. And we were really leaning towards something around language. And we came up with this idea to have um a child care center where children would learn Spanish while learning um English at home. So they'll learn Spanish at school and English at home. And um my my parents owned a child care center in Galveston, Texas, many, many, many years ago. I was actually raised going to that school from like zero to five. And I had really positive experiences um with that, with that child care center. And so I thought, okay, you know, I think we can do this. I I think I need to partner with my mom because she has the the know-how. She also has a master's in early childhood development. So, so the four of us partnered together and we started the pineapple school. And um the pineapple school, it's it's it's a really special place. I'm I'm I'm not just saying that, but I truly believe that from the bottom of my heart. From the moment you walk in the door, you um you can just feel the Spanish and Latin culture, um, the music playing, the smells in the halls of of the food that's being prepared. Um, because by the way, we serve food um that's Spanish or um Latin American. It's like food that you would be eating if you were going to sch, you know, if if a child was going to school in in Mexico.

Kate Woodward Young 4:42

So in other words, if I come to visit, I have to be prepared to be hungry. Yes, and we will feed you. We will feed you. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

And the food is.

Kate Woodward Young 4:49

So that so it sounds like it also might be a the solution to my um so this is, you know, this is how you know you're an Anglo, right? Like I go and find the little old ladies in the Lowe's parking lot in November with their their their tamales in their igloos. And that like I feel like I'm doing drug deals, but that's where I buy my tamales. And you know they're gonna be good.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

Yes, and you can probably buy tamales at um at the pineapple school because the teachers are always um bringing them and sharing them or selling them. Yeah, it's great.

Kate Woodward Young 5:23

All right, I I'll place my off off this call so nobody else reach out and ask about tamales, but I will um be sending you an email about the tamale, my tamale order.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

So yeah, um it's just it's just a very warm place. All of our teachers are from Mexico or Latin America, um, and we really encourage them to share their culture with the children. Um, so we don't, even though we're right, you know, two hours essentially from Mexico, we really try to embrace um the cultures of all the Latin American countries. Um and yeah, it's just a really special, special place. It's very um nurturing and warm. Um, we are uh a hands-on play-based program. We we we really don't do any worksheets. Um we want every every we want all the children to learn with with their hands and with their senses. And we feel like that way it makes learning fun and it makes learning stick.

Kate Woodward Young 6:23

Oh, I love that. So I have a quick question for you. I heard you say something and you just kind of glossed over it. So I'm gonna bring you back. Okay. So you mentioned that you started the business with your husband, and then if I heard you right, your mom and dad were also involved when launching. And how long have you had the pineapple schools? And tell me a little bit about this whole family connection.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

Yeah, so we opened our doors in 2010. Um, and yes, uh, I I was we were part, my husband and I were partners with my parents. My husband and my father were more behind the scenes. My mom was the director of our first school, and I I handled like business operations. Um beyond that, and so now, and and just to fast forward a little bit, now my par my my father passed away, and my mom is no longer an owner, although she is still involved. Now my sister is involved. She's a one of our co-owners. And um, for our three campuses, my brother helped us um find our properties. My brother, my brother and my brother-in-law, really. Um, so they they helped us on the real estate end. And then my sister-in-law owns a janitorial company, so they help us um keep our schools clean every day. Um, so it's very much a family, family-run business. And it is it is truly wonderful. And also, my kids attended pineapple school. Now my sister's kids attend. Um, my kids are teenagers now, and they um like spend the summers volunteering at the schools. So it's very, very much um a family operation. Um it and and it's it's been great. Like I feel like I've been I've been very fortunate. We have we all have very good relationships in terms of working with your family. I think it can be very challenging. I think the most important thing is just being always being very honest and open. Um and when something frustrates you, you have to just bring it to the table early because I feel like when things, you know, stay inside, they just um tend to grow and grow and and it gets worse and worse. So yeah, I think that that would be my and then and then communication. I think communication is is super important and having like regular, regular meetings um to report on all the things that are that are important in a business.

Kate Woodward Young 8:50

So tell me what that looks like with your family. Like, is this like family dinner kind of meetings or are you more we have them once a month and everybody's at a board table? Like, what does that look like?

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Well, so we've we've really evolved. Um, before I think it was like we we we also lived at the time within like a half a mile of each other, all of us. And so every time we would get together, we would find ourselves talking about pineapple school and the and every time we're on the phone, like all the time. Um but I feel like that was when in the early phases when you're just um it's all you can think about because you know it's so important that your business is successful. And so it just, it's just kind of like your life, right? Um I think now we've evolved. Um, we're we're a little bit more mature in terms of of business owners, and now we actually run on EOS um, entrepreneurial uh on operating system, and we have weekly meetings like no matter what. So my sister and my husband and I meet every single Thursday at 9:30. And since it's a 90-minute meeting, and we we cover everything. And then, of course, if there's other things that we need to meet about, you know, we we we schedule other meetings um to talk about more specific things. But no matter what, we have that meeting, and and it that's been really great for us. I I highly recommend that.

Kate Woodward Young 10:18

One of the things that I heard that I think is inspirational that I hope other people heard too, is you had parents who didn't necessarily like you didn't start, they didn't start childcares and grow the child care. You started in business and came in, and even your parents were off-site owners when their program was started. So you grew up with, although your mom was there sometimes because of you know, needing to be the director, but it didn't necessarily start that way. It am I correct in that understanding?

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Like the child care center in Galveston. Um gosh, I think she married my husband and he already had it. Um your father already had the child care.

Kate Woodward Young 10:57

Oh, well, how interesting is that? So he was trying to. He was an off-site owner before that was a um, I'm gonna go with a popular trend, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

Well, this is crazy, but he he was trying, he was, I believe, a resident. He's a he was a physician, and he was a resident, and he lived in a duplex, and the other unit or the unit right next to him, or right above him, or below him, was um vacant. And so he decided to rent it and start a child care center because some neighbors needed child care. That's how it started.

Kate Woodward Young 11:27

Oh, what an interesting story there. Okay, that's a whole other episode.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

That's a whole other story, but um, and then you know, then he I I guess he had someone running it. This is way before I was born, and even before he was married, and then he met my mom, um, who was a nurse, and then she helped him. And then, like I said, uh, I think I mentioned in our conversation before the podcast, like she would sometimes be a nurse and work as a nurse, and she would sometimes have to leave her job and go be a director of of the school. And it grew, it grew, you know, they ended up in a I think they had like a capacity of like a hundred or a hundred and twenty-five students um before before they sold it. So it was like a bigger operation.

Kate Woodward Young 12:08

Love that story. So your schools are not small, so you do not have tiny schools. Right. So tell me a little bit about um what prompted you to go past the first location and then a little bit about what that franchise journey has looked like to date.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Yeah, so um, within about a year of opening the pineapple school, we were on a waiting list, and that waiting list just started growing and it was longer and longer. And um to the point where we were having, you know, families that were upset with us, I think we weren't very good at predicting when we would have openings, and so maybe we were overpromising a little bit. But the bottom line is that we just kind of realized like we had the demand, um, which by the way, we weren't even we weren't even really doing marketing. Uh and to this day, we bit we rarely do any kind of marketing, like it's all word of mouth. Um, but yeah, so we we just had a like a a two-year waiting list in some age groups, and we thought we've got to open another one or somebody else will. So we started looking and um literally opened five years later in 2020 uh 2015. Um, and then the same thing happened at that location where we um got on a long waiting list and and we thought, no, we we we've got to expand. And so we opened up a third school in 2020. We were supposed to open like March 20th, I think. Um, we ended up delaying that a little bit, but but yes.

Kate Woodward Young 13:36

I know you mean, you know, March 20th was not a good day to to launch a childcare center in 2020.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Well, believe it or not, so um COVID hit uh San Antonio March 13th, if I'm remembering my date.

Kate Woodward Young 13:48

Yeah, to me, it's to me it was Friday the 13th, is when I remember because we were my kids were in um the first day of spring break. And so as they left for spring break, basically everybody got home and everybody was kind of told at that point in time, spring break is gonna be two weeks this year. That was it was only going to last a week.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

I remember that. I was right around spring break. And so, yeah, we ended up opening, believe it or not, um, because we had already had families enrolled that really needed the care because they still had to work during COVID, and because we are already had hired teachers and we had to already be paying a mortgage on our this giant building that we built, um, almost 15,000 square feet, we decided to open. We opened in May, and we opened, you know, on a much smaller scale, but um it was better than than not opening. And it what was nice about it is that we were able to have very few children, uh, very few number of children in each class. So that um, you know, they're it was it was as it was safe, almost as safe as being at home, right? Not sort of. Um, anyways, but within a year, um, again, that school was full. Now, this is kind of when we started talking about franchising because I didn't mention this earlier, but another component um that is very important at our schools is the family involvement and community. Um we're just we're we're we're we're very close with like our staff is very close with the families. The families are close with each other. And we thought, you know, we we definitely want to open a fourth school, but we're with three schools, it's already really hard to still know the children and the families. Um, you know, when when we had one school, I knew everybody. When I had knew two schools, when we had two schools, I knew, you know, about half of the people. But when I had, once I had three, it was it was impossible for us to know everybody. And so we thought, well, we can still grow, but if we do franchising, we can find like-minded people, people that share our same values, maybe even a family like us, maybe not, um, that can go and build a school just or build a pineapple school in their backyard and still have that family component, but it's them instilling it rather rather than us. And so that's kind of why we started even studying franchising. And then we went to a conference um just to learn more. It had, you know, took a bunch of courses, met a met a bunch of people kind of to decide if we were gonna move forward with with that.

Kate Woodward Young 16:31

Great. And so you do have three um three penned franchisees, and but tell me about the one that's not in Texas, because I love that story.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

Okay. So um, yeah, one of our franchises that one of the franchises we've awarded is in Rogers, Arkansas. And um sounds kind of random, but um, so if we had a family that they used to have their children attending pineapple school, is a doctor and a pharmacist, and they decided to relocate to Arkansas to be back back home closer to family because they were um expecting a third child. And so when they got to Rogers, and this is northwest Arkansas, which is where um like the Walmart headquarters and Tyson Foods headquarters is, and they got to Rogers and they just weren't finding anything that was comparable to the Pineapple School. And so they contacted us and they're like, there's nothing here. We are thinking about franchising pineapple school. And so we started, you know, studying the market and realized it was a great market, great family, um, that I think is is is very much like-minded, like like like I said, we were looking for. And so, yeah, one thing led to another, and and now we're you know, you could say a national brand because we're we're outside of Texas, or we will be.

Kate Woodward Young 17:52

I love that. And for so for those who are who are kind of keeping track on a calendar, it wasn't something that they did overnight. It's it took you some time. You got experts, you got people to actually help you do this. You didn't just go, oh, I can do it myself. I mean, you guys had business backgrounds, you both, you know, you had people in your network who had done similar types, right? And so I can see how somebody listening might be like a, I'm sure they had all the skills, but you didn't. You actually paused and said, Hey, let's go find experts in franchising and work with them.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

And how long was that process? Did you Yeah, we we hired consultants and they helped us. It was a it was about a 12-month process to go through the entire um to to basically create the whole franchise system. Um, and that that includes um legal documents, operational manual, marketing, um, finance, financing, putting a pitch deck together, like all of these things. And it some people I have heard of brands do franchising on their own, but um, I I don't think we would have been able to do it without um S and B franchising. They were they were they're so knowledgeable and they made they made the process, I would say, pretty easy for us. Oh well, um, but it is franchising is a totally different industry. So, like, yes, we are still running three child care centers and we we want to, you know, do it very well and we want to be improving every single day. Um, but then we're we also have this franchise business, which is so now we're in franchising, it's like a completely different industry. And I don't think I realized that um when we signed decided to when we made this this jump, but it's been really fun. Um, you know, it's definitely been a learning process, and I've met so many people. We're learning, yeah. We're learning so much every day, even now. When we're like, I love that.

Kate Woodward Young 19:45

So, regardless of whether or not you think you already know what you're doing or not, hopefully you've learned, even from those with, you know, who might be considered experts or somebody else might look at and go, I want to be like her. Even you said, I can't do this myself. So hopefully those who are listening really understand the importance of finding and building that network to go to conferences outside of early childhood, go to the right conferences, find the right people and make those connections. Anything that you would say to somebody who's listening, who might have one or two locations, who's thinking, you know, I kind of like the idea of maybe growing but not having to be in charge of everything. What tips might you get them give them to consider the pros and cons of actually moving forward with something like franchising?

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Um I would say you need to be make sure you have um everything, all your ducks in a row. Like you need to make sure that your your business is very organized, uh, because essentially you'll be taking your playbook, how you run your business, and handing that over to your franchisees. So everything that you have in your head that's not on paper, I I would say that would be the first step is to really just get it on paper in a in a way that's kind of easy to to digest. I would say that's the big first step. And then um definitely engage help. Um, and also I would I if you want to contact me for for some tips I'd I'd be more more than willing to to help. And then then also finally what I just said about this isn't you you're essentially moving into another industry. So you have to, you know, make sure your you and your partners are are okay with that because like I said, franchising is totally different. Now our clients are our franchisees. We have to make our franchisees happy. Um, whereas with our schools, it's all about our children and their families. So it's it's very different.

Kate Woodward Young 21:52

Love that. Well, thank you so much. All of um Chrisana's contact information will be in the show notes. Uh, you can check out the pineapple school online, and we can't wait to have, we'll definitely have to have Chrisana on with some of her franchisees after they break ground and open their doors because I can't wait to hear how the whole circle goes. Uh, I may have to take a road trip and and go to all these little pineapple schools and and bring my tamales or my tamale bucket. I'm gonna just have a bucket and say, fill me up with tamales. So um, can you tell that I am really happy that I moved to Texas and that I love my tamales? Because I am, you know, this Midwestern gal never had a tamale before I moved to Texas and uh definitely appreciate a good tamale. Actually, really great any Latin American food. I mean, you can only, I mean, I do love myself some pot roast, but you know, sometimes you need something other than a Midwest pot roast or casserole. So uh we I am so glad that you joined us on today's episode. If you don't already follow Childcare Conversations newsletter, go to the website childcareconversations.com, click the newsletter button, sign up for the newsletter. We'd love to have you join our newsletter. We have two a week. They always coincide with episodes, but you know what? Sometimes in the newsletter we share things that aren't actually in the episode. So if you want bonus content, join us over there, and we can't wait to have a conversation with you in a few days.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

Thank you.

Childcare Conversations 23:23

Thanks for tuning in. We love bringing you real talk and fresh insight from the world of early childhood education. Be sure to follow us on social media to stay connected and catch all of the latest episodes. And if you're planning a conference, training, or special event, Kate and Carrie would love to speak to your audience. You can learn more about their keynote sessions and workshops at kateandcary.com. If you learned something today, share the show and leave us a review below. We'll see you next time on Childcare Conversations.