Cora Mussely Tsouflidou

The Business of Breakfast

Initiative, passion, energy and self-confidence amount to the principle ingredients in Cora Mussely Tsouflidou’s healthy serving of success.

They say breakfast is the best way to kick-start your day. And for Cora Mussely Tsouflidou, founder of Cora’s Restaurants, le petit dejeuner also proved to be the ideal start to a new passion… and profession.

Indeed, her passion for creating and serving healthy breakfast is precisely what set her on the road to success. From hostess in a popular Montreal restaurant, then day manager, general manager and junior partner, to restaurant operator – not to mention one of Profit magazine’s 2003 100 Top Business Women and recipient of the Governor General’s award – “Quebec’s Breakfast Queen”, as she has come to be called, has more than earned the honour of Hall of Fame inductee.

“If I had known how far I would come and how much success I would see, I may not have started because I would have been scared,” Tsouflidou laughs, reflecting on her 1987 beginning when she first turned a defunct snack bar in Montreal into a thriving popular breakfast destination. “I had no idea it would grow quite like this.”

Her breakfast concept – focused on blending traditional family-style breakfasts with fresh food and health food trends – struck a chord with consumers, and in 1990 she opened a second restaurant in another district of Montreal. That same year Tsouflidou opened a third, and much larger location, followed by five more restaurants – each with 120-plus seating capacity.

“My sales philosophy? Premium food and top-notch service. Be the greatest and people will come. If we serve the best breakfast in town, where else are people going to go?” she asks.

In 1994, with eight thriving restaurants, Tsouflidou decided to teach others the winning recipe, and morph herself into a franchisor – creating Franchises Cora Inc. (She subsequently launched Cas-seroles Cora Inc. to develop and manufacture all the food ingredients franchisees require; and in 2000 she founded the Cora Franchise Group to target rest of Canada.)

“I transformed the passion that I had for breakfast to franchising. I’m a creator – an innovator. When I found out I could copy myself and duplicate my success, I dreamed of filling the province of Quebec, and then all of Canada,” she says.

“We always thought that if we help people to make money, there will be some money left for us. Our revenue is directly proportionate to the sales of our franchisees. So we need to help and support them,” she adds, citing the extensive selection and training program she designed for her Chez Cora and Cora’s restaurants, of which there are currently 75 in 6 provinces (Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick, Manitoba, Nova Scotia and PEI) with over 500 employees.

Her support also extends to the various communities her restaurants are a part of. “Community,” she says, “is our reason for being so we have to share our success with them – from the very beginning we always helped children, [with] breakfast in schools.”

In 1998, Tsouflidou created the CORA Foundation to help underprivileged young children. Through various activities like its annual golf tourney and specific in-restaurant sales drives, the foundation donates to community organizations that work with schools in the hope of offering kids “the nourishment they need to pursue their dreams”.