67 WALL STREET, New York - November 22, 2009 - The Wall Street Transcript has just published its Travel and Leisure--Airlines, Hotels, Resorts, Cruise Lines, and Restaurants Report offering a timely review of the sector to serious investors and industry executives. This 137 page feature contains expert industry commentary through 25 in-depth interviews with public company CEOs, Equity Analysts and Money Managers. The full issue is available via The Wall Street Transcript Online.

Topics covered: Consumer Traveler Spending - U-Shaped Recovery in Restaurant Sector - Low-Cost and Network Airlines - Airline Carriers and Online Travel Agencies - Hotel Occupancy Rates - Improvement in Transportation Sector - Upscale Casual and Fast Casual Restaurants - Near-Term Risk in Hotel Space - Fuel Prices a Universal Concern - Restaurant Industry Stability - Increased Consolidation in Airline Industry - Firming of Traffic Trends in Restaurant Space

Companies include: Vail Resorts, Inc. (MTN); Air France-KLM (AFLYY); AirTrans (AAI); Alaska Air Group (ALK); Allegiant Travel Group (ALGT); American Airlines (AMR); Applebee's (APPB); Ashford (AHT); BJ's Restaurants (BJRI); Boeing (BA); Brinker (EAT); British Airways (BAY); Buffalo Wild Wings (BWLD); Burger King Corp (BKC); California Pizza Kitchen (CPKI); Carnival (CCL); Cheesecake Factories (CAKE); Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG); Choice (CHH); Continental (CAL); Darden (DRI); Deltas (DAL); Denny's (DENN); DiamondRock (DRH); Domino's (DPZ); Expedia (EXPE); Famous Dave's (DAVE); FelCor (FCH); Gaylord Entertainment (GET); Great Wolf Resorts (WOLF); Green Mountain (GMCR); Hawaiian Holdings (HA); Home Inns & Hotels (HMIN); Hospitality Properties Trust (HPT); JetBlues (JBLU); LaSalle Hotel Properties (LHO); Lufthansa (LHA); MHI Hospitality Corporation (MDH); Marriott (MAR); McDonald's (MCD); Mesa (MESA); Morton's (MRT); National Business Travel Association (NBTA); National Mediation Board (NMB); Orbitz (OWW); P.F. Chang's (PFCB); Panera Bread (PNRA); Peet's (PEET); Priceline (PCLN); Republic (RJET); Royal (RCL); Royal Caribbean International (HST); Ruby Tuesday (RT); Ruth's Chris Steakhouse (RUTH); Sonesta (SNSTA); Sonic (SONC); Southwests (LUV); Spicy Pickle (SPKL.OB); Starbucks (SBUX); Starwood (HOT); Strategic (BEE); Sunstone (SHO); Texas Roadhouse (TXRH); UFood (UFFC.OB); US Air (LCC); Uniteds (UAUA); Wyndham (WYN).

In the following brief excerpt from just one of the 25 in depth interviews in the 137 page special report, the CEO of Spicy Pickle discusses the outlook for his company.

Marc N. Geman is the President, CEO and Chairman of the board of directors of Spicy Pickle Franchising. From 1994 to 1998, he was President of Pretzelmaker, a national franchisor of soft pretzels that he built from a handful to over 240 stores and sold to Mrs. Fields Cookies, Inc., in November 1998. Prior to SPF, Mr. Geman was an Officer and Director of Bayview Technology Group, a company that developed energy-efficient products, and of Portfolio Management Consultants, Inc., an investment advisory firm that managed assets for high-net-worth individuals. Mr. Geman has been a licensed attorney since 1973.

TWST: Would you begin with a brief historical sketch of the company and a picture of what you're doing now?

Mr. Geman: Spicy Pickle (SPKL.OB) started in 1999 in Denver, Colo. It was conceived as an upscale sub shop started by two chefs who were working in an Italian restaurant at the time and believed they could improve on Denver's sandwiches, which, up until Spicy Pickle opened, were typical sub shops. They came up with a variety of panini, subs and salads, and a build-your-own menu with very extensive toppings, proprietary spreads on fresh-made bread. They developed a cult following and opened two more restaurants by 2001. I became involved with them in late 2002. We discussed making a franchise company out of the concept and worked on that for about a year and a half. Our first franchises were sold in late 2003.

Spicy Pickle has been a franchise company for about six years, and we now have 37 stores in 11 states; 19 of them are here in Colorado, which is our home base. We have developments in Texas, Southern California, Nevada and the Chicago area. We have single restaurants in Cincinnati, Hattiesburg and Ashburn, Va. Spicy Pickle has an infrastructure of franchise people that includes training, operations, marketing, culinary, franchise sales, legal, real estate departments and administration. We're looking to continue to expand the Spicy Pickle concept, but we feel that we have the infrastructure to support more right now. And so about a year ago, year and a half ago, we started looking at some other concepts that were in the fast casual mode.

We came across and eventually purchased a concept in Vancouver, Canada, called the Bread Garden Urban Cafes, which are in the bakery-cafe category as opposed to the sandwich category. We concluded that deal on Oct. 1, 2008. We are improving the menu to bring up the quality of the offerings at the Bread Garden Urban Cafes. So both concepts are really based on delivering a healthy, fresh-made food, artisan breads made from scratch daily, meats and poultry that are non-preservatives and interesting sandwich choices for the customers, with the add-on specialty coffee part for the Bread Garden.

TWST: Tell me about your own background. You built Pretzelmaker from six to 240 stores before selling to Mrs. Fields. Are there lessons you've taken from that experience and applied to the Spicy Pickle model?

Mr. Geman: Sure. Pretzelmaker is a soft pretzel, mall-based concept. We expanded that concept very quickly into malls all over North America. There were 33 in Canada, but the bulk of the 250 were here in the States. We had stores in Seoul, Korea, and we were about to open in Hong Kong when Mrs. Fields Cookies purchased us. There were several lessons that we learned with Pretzelmaker that we applied here. The first is that you need a sufficient infrastructure of personnel, processes and systems to support a franchise company. A franchise company is a business - it's not necessarily running the restaurants themselves - so you need all the support pieces. I learned to put that in place very quickly so that we didn't wind up expanding before you have the infrastructure to do so. You need capital to support that infrastructure, but without it you risk not being able to support your system. That was one lesson.

Another lesson we learned at Pretzelmaker was if a store was going to close, we didn't take it back corporately because you wind up dissipating your operational personnel, trying to run stores instead of working with the franchisees. If you're a franchise model, then you have a franchise infrastructure. Corporate stores are necessary to train people, to try product development, for new local store-marketing efforts, to implement new systems and processes, but not due to franchisees failing. We do everything we can to help them, but we don't take over.

Another lesson we learned from Pretzelmaker was that people eat first with their eyes. We took a lot of photography of pretzels and we displayed our product photography, and it worked in terms of noticeable increase in sales of the displayed product. We are doing that here as well at Spicy Pickle. We have very high-quality food. We've taken some very high-quality photography; we are putting it around the stores and on our Web site so that people understand what Spicy Pickle is and can distinguish it as the premier sandwich market.

MARC N. GEMAN

President & CEO

Spicy Pickle Franchising, Inc.

The Wall Street Transcript is a unique service for investors and industry researchers - providing fresh commentary and insight through verbatim interviews with CEOs and research analysts. This 137 page special issue is available by calling (212) 952-7433 or via The Wall Street Transcript Online .

The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse the views of any interviewees nor does it make stock recommendations.

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