The first Biggby coffee shop was founded 13 years ago. Now the chain has 100 stores in nine states: Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Florida, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. Biggby’s franchise-based model gives it an advantage over other regional coffee chains by lowering the cost for the company to expand and it gives each store local connections.

Bob Fish, the East Lansing-based chain’s chief executive officer and one its co-founders said,

“We are a franchise company and Starbucks is not. Most of our operators are people from the community…There’s a big difference between an owner running the store and any other restaurant chain with many, many units. They’re not just an employee; they own the business. It adds energy, excitement and enthusiasm.”

Because each store has local connections, this contributes to more meaningful customer engagement and greater customer service.

So far Biggby’s business model has been working. They expect to grow to 250 stores by 2010.

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Last year, Circuit City laid off thousands of its best-paid and most knowledgeable sales staffers, only to see them snatched up by Best Buy. Circuit City sales have plummeted while even in this weak economy, Best Buy is thriving because of its emphasis on customer service.

Across many industries, we’ve seen that the retailers that grow customer-service ratings the fastest have greater sales growth,” says Chris Denove of J.D. Power and Associates. “Prices have come down dramatically on electronics items, and at the same time, the complexity of the products has increased. Expert advice is more important than ever.”

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