On the personal front, too, the job is not exactly lining their pockets. Michael is the only one drawing a small salary from the operation, and both he and Kenneth live with their parents ''and eat a lot of cereal'' to cut costs.

Josh, on the other hand, was recently married and has kept his full-time job at the Miami accounting firm of BSS&S. ''It has definitely taken a toll on us financially,'' said Kenneth, who has been living off savings. ``But we are working so many hours right now that there's really no time to spend that money that we're not really making.''

But that could all change very quickly, if The Bowl goes ahead with plans to sell a franchise early next year.

The company is already drawing up the required legal documents and has hosted a group of investors from California. In coming weeks they are hoping to find a commercial space where they can set up a larger office and a mock counter to test new products and train future franchisees.

But in order to focus on expansion, their current store will need to run by itself, and that makes Glassman, the VP and chief operating officer, a tad anxious.

''Since we opened, I have been there five to seven days a week,'' said Glassman, who developed many of the operating procedures and hired and trained the staff. ``The scariest thing is that I know I'm going to have to let go, like the first day you drop off your kid at kindergarten. . . . And I always question myself, `Are the operations good enough? Have I done everything I could do?'''

If putting the store on auto pilot carries risk, so does the growth process. The trio have read enough business books to know the list of once good companies that ruined themselves by giving into the temptation of quick growth is long.

''The three of us need to be patient and not so eager,'' said Josh. ``But when you get a call from Canada saying they want to franchise the whole country, you do get eager. . .. But just because someone waves $30,000 in front of our face to open a franchise doesn't mean we are going to take it.''

Even so, the company hopes to be hammering out its first franchise agreement (probably for stores on the West Coast) as early as March.

On a recent Sunday morning at the store -- as families chatted around tables and college-age couch-slouchers shoveled away cereal and stared at flat-screen TVs -- Kenneth said that despite all their success over the past year, it's too soon to declare victory.

''I don't consider ourselves successful, and I probably never will,'' he said. ``Because once you are content with that, where do you go from there?''

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