FAYETTEVILLE  —  Owning a third franchise of The UPS Store has been all about the scale for Kevin Fallis. 

The economies of scale, not the postal scale.

“There are great benefits to having more than one store,” says Fallis, who acquired his third franchise at 201 W. Genesee St. in Fayetteville in August 2011. “Two is better than one, and three is better than two.”

Gaining efficiency on supplies and staffing are among those benefits, according to Fallis. For example, having a third store makes it easier to buy boxes in bulk to avoid a delivery charge, he says. And, staffing is more efficient because employees can rotate among the stores, he adds.

“We staff the business in such a way that the employees are flexible,” he says. “We will use them where we need them. You can run the business effectively with fewer people.”

Fallis’ franchises employ a total of 12 people. That’s down from a peak of 16 when he first purchased the Fayetteville store, which had five employees at the time.

Although he suspected he was overstaffed after he acquired The UPS Store in Fayetteville, Fallis says he did not lay off any employees. He watched how his franchises ran with 16 employees, and he chose not to replace workers who were leaving until he felt the business had contracted to the correct number of staffers.

That right amount is currently 12, including Fallis, he says. But he would eventually like to hire a manager for his DeWitt store, which is located at 4465 E. Genesee St. 

Fallis is currently acting as the manager for that store. He has no timeline for hiring the new manager because he does not want to do so until he feels the business has grown enough to support the added position.

In addition to his stores in Fayetteville and DeWitt, Fallis owns a franchise at 118 Julian Place in Syracuse. It was his first franchise, which he purchased in 2007 from its owner, Nora Gallagher, who was moving out of the Syracuse area, he says.

Then Fallis says he had the chance to acquire the franchises in Fayetteville and DeWitt in 2008 from Marshall Reisman. Fallis opted to acquire the DeWitt store only.

“At the time I wasn’t comfortable going from one to three,” he says. “I just thought it was a little too much to take on.”

Fallis seized a second opportunity to acquire the Fayetteville franchise in 2011 when its owner, Wade Wadsworth, opted to sell it. Wadsworth, who acquired the franchise after Fallis passed on it in 2008, owns other franchises of The UPS Store in the Albany area. Wadsworth decided to sell the Fayetteville franchise because it was too far away from his other stores, according to Fallis, who declined to reveal the financial terms of any of his acquisitions.

The Fayetteville franchise is helping Fallis target total revenue growth of 6 percent to 8 percent in 2012 among his three stores. He would only be aiming for about 2 percent growth without the Fayetteville franchise, he says.

“Fayetteville is equal to the other two put together,” says Fallis, who declined to share revenue totals. “That is the largest volume of the three.”

Acquiring The UPS Store in Fayetteville was a boost to Fallis’ franchises’ printing business, he says. He considers digital printing his company’s biggest growth opportunity.

After purchasing the Fayetteville store, Fallis leased new printing equipment with a value of over $70,000 for it, he says. He is using the store as his franchises’ printing hub, meaning large-volume, high-quality, and specialty printing projects are done there. The other two stores can handle smaller projects, he says.

Other potential sources of revenue growth are direct-mail advertisements and freight, according to Fallis. The UPS Store franchises can administer direct mailings to potential customers and ship freight of less than one truckload, he says. Many of their services are aimed at small businesses, he adds.

“People tend to think that all we do is ship products and small packages,” he says. “In reality, there are a lot of other things we do. We want to help other small businesses like us do things that they need to grow.”

Fallis has not relocated any of his franchises since acquiring them. The Syracuse store is in 1,000 square feet of space in a building Fallis owns. The DeWitt store takes up 2,100 square feet he leases from DeWitt Plaza Development Co., and the Fayetteville store leases 2,800 square feet in a building owned by an individual who prefers to remain private, according to Fallis.

The franchise fee for The UPS Store is $29,950 with ongoing royalty fees of 5 percent, according to Entrepreneur.com. The site lists franchise agreements as renewable with 10-year terms.       

ONONDAGA  —  Tynesia Matthews Jennings is striving to inject some compassion into home care with her new company, Loyalty Senior Care.

She founded the business in March, giving it the mission to provide elderly and disabled individuals with home-care services like light housekeeping, meal preparation, reading, and errands. It also offers companion care — spending time with solitary individuals who don’t have a spouse or child around to keep them company.

Jennings spent 12 years working as a home-care provider in Syracuse and North Carolina before deciding to start Loyalty Senior Care. She founded the agency because she felt she could give clients more empathy than they were receiving from other providers, she says.

“I know this is my passion, to work for the elderly,” she says. “I said maybe I should just come up with my own agency.

Growing her client base will be a lengthy process, according to Jennings. She plans to run print advertisements and visit senior fairs to publicize Loyalty Senior Care. And she tries to appear on Christian radio stations, she adds.

Those strategies follow advertising already placed in publications targeting Camillus and Solvay. Jennings also mailed postcard advertisements when she first opened Loyalty Senior Care.

That mailing is an example of how long it can take to build a client base for home care, according to Jennings. She says she is still fielding inquiries from people who received postcards, she says.

“They think, ‘We’ve got that information, but we don’t need it at this time,’ ” she says. “Then when they go in as children and are there with mom and dad all the time, they say, ‘Let’s get prices.’ ”

Learning about insurance coverage can also influence families to look into home care, Jennings adds.

“They think they have to come out-of-pocket for it,” she says. “What they don’t know is a lot of long-term-care insurance pays for these kinds of services.”

Loyalty Senior Care is headquartered in a 150-square-foot office leased at 2700 Bellevue Ave. in the town of Onondaga. Winkworth Properties Inc. is the landlord.

The agency currently has seven part-time employees. Jennings has the goal of growing to employ 30 part-time workers by June 2013.

That would allow Loyalty Senior Care to serve at least 50 clients at a time, Jennings estimates. She anticipates leasing additional space at 2700 Bellevue Ave. as necessary. However, she declined to share revenue projections for 2012 or exact growth estimates.

Eventually, Jennings also wants to expand her agency’s services. It currently does not offer medical care. Jennings would like the agency to become licensed to provide some home health-care services after it is established. 

 In the mean time, she plans to work with clients who feel they can’t afford home care. Loyalty Senior Care will negotiate new rates so clients who are short on cash can receive services, Jennings says. 

“Why should people be at home and miserable and not comfortable?” she says. “You work something out so that it’s still affordable to them. You feel it in your heart if you turn someone down because they don’t have the money.”       

SALINA  —  A La Carte Business Services is following a recipe for growth this year with a new location and new hiring.

The firm, which offers outsourced office operations such as accounting, bookkeeping, cost analysis, and efficiency evaluations for small businesses, moved into a new home at 916B Old Liverpool Road in the town of Salina at the end of April. It hired one new employee at the time and has another new worker scheduled to start at the beginning of July.

And the hiring won’t stop there, according to the company’s business plan. It calls for mixing in one or two more employees by the end of this year. Those new workers will go toward a long-term goal of sprinkling in four more employees within three years.

If A La Carte Business Services meets that goal, it will have a total of six employees plus its owner, Chris Belna. Although Belna was the firm’s only employee for nearly two years after she founded the business in July 2010, the idea of expanding and hiring has always been simmering in her mind, she says.

“This is a dream of mine for really over 10 years,” she says. “I didn’t really start it because I wanted a paycheck. I started it because I wanted a business.”

Belna declined to share a revenue total for 2011. However, she says she plans to nearly double the company’s revenue in 2012, she says.

Before moving to Old Liverpool Road, Belna ran A La Carte Business Services from her home in Salina. The firm’s new office, which is leased from Michael P. Charles, is 900 square feet, giving it room to hold its new and planned hires.

A La Carte Business Services did not need to perform much work when moving into its new location, according to Belna. The space was ready to hold the business, aside from needing some color in the form of a coat of paint Belna and her new employee applied, she says.

KeyBank recently awarded the company a line of credit for more than $30,000. A La Carte Business Services will tap that line of credit in its first year to support the hiring of its new employee in July, according to Belna. Its business plan calls for it to repay any borrowing within 12 months, she adds.

Belna founded the company after working in operations and business management in the restaurant, investment, and construction fields. Moving between industries showed her that all types of firms need smooth-running office operations, she says.

“It kept proving to me that the basis for running a company, no matter what product you’re selling, is the administration,” Belna says. “What small business wouldn’t want to hire an operations manager who came and knew how to do all the things that I’ve been doing for 20 years? But they can’t always afford the salary of an operations manager.”

A La Carte Business Services typically works with small firms of 10 or fewer employees, particularly when providing accounting services, according to Belna. It has also worked with businesses with more than 10 employees on different projects, she adds.

In addition to providing accounting and bookkeeping services, the business-services firm sometimes trains clients’ staff members and owners to do their own accounting. And it can help business owners on other operations, from bidding for liability insurance to hiring.

A La Carte Business Services currently works with about 25 clients, according to Belna. They range from an interior decorator to a real-estate firm. One of her better-known clients is Patrick Ambron of the Syracuse startup BrandYourself.com, she says.

Belna plans to add new clients through networking and word-of-mouth. Customers are more likely to trust the company if they know someone who is working with the firm, she says.

Expanding A La Carte Business Services’ training offerings is another potential source of growth. Belna is developing a course in QuickBooks software to train staff members at companies with positions dedicated to bookkeeping. She would like to train between 12 and 15 people at one time in the class.

“I think that it’s important for that employer who has those five people who just need to learn more about how to use the software,” she says. “I found so many people use their accounting software as a glorified checkbook. And there are so many things in it that give them tools to help them run their business that people don’t tap into.”