Creating a Sweet Blend of Decorative Chips
In mid-August of 2013, our general manager, Gary, worked with the owners of this new sweetFrog location in Carlisle, PA. sweetFrog is a growing franchise network of premium frozen yogurt stores. The owners were familiar with our company’s decorative, epoxy coatings after seeing the metallic epoxy coatings we had done at the Polar Peach in Lancaster, PA and The Frosty Llama in Dillsburg, PA (two independent frozen yogurt restaurants).
As we discussed our epoxy flooring options, we discovered that, unlike the previous independent frozen yogurt stores we had coated in the past two years, sweetFrog franchises have a very unique color scheme to their stores.
After viewing dozens of standard decorative chip blends, we decided a custom blend chip floor would be the best approach to incorporate their corporate franchise colors.
To accomplish this task, Gary pulled in the primary BLUE, PINK and GREEN colors, which identified the sweetFrog franchise, and developed two custom chip blends. We produced two sample boards and presented them. After some slight tweaking of the pink paint chip, we produced a third custom blend and got the approval to install this blend in the entire customer area of the store.
The Coatings Installation
After scheduling our install dates in late September with the general contractor, STRONGHOLD FLOORS began the three day install of our decorative chip flooring system.
The first day, we prepared the concrete floor by diamond grinding and repaired any existing areas that were damaged or cracked. More work went into cleaning up the areas that were newly trenched for necessary plumbing.
The following day, we applied our 100% solids, pigmented epoxy base coat (medium gray) and our custom blended vinyl chips.
On the final day, after scraping and removing loose chips, our coating team applied our clear, polyaspartic top coat (aluminum oxide added for additional slip resistance and wearibility). Over the same three days, we applied a solid color, gray epoxy floor in the production/employee area. The final product was exactly what we wanted for our customer.
In early October, Gary was able to return to the site in its first week of serving the frozen treats. It wasn’t until then that he was able to see the full impact of how well the custom chip blend meshed with the shop. From the yogurt machines, the toppings bar, the chairs, the tables, to the signage on the wall, it all looked like it came in one packaged deal with our floor. We were pleased to hear from both John and Stephanie on how well the floor colors turned out and how well it matched the rest of the sweetFrog merchandise and signage.
STRONGHOLD FLOORS was then contacted by a different franchise owner that attended the grand opening of the Carlisle store. This franchise owner was looking for floor coatings assistance in a new, under construction sweetFrog in Carroll County, Maryland. He contacted us the very same day of the Carlisle grand opening. In 2014, we installed the same floor coating in this new location.
Unfortunately, as of 2019, this sweetFrog location (and the Maryland location) has closed down.
