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Upsize Your Profit: 6 Steps to Running a Profitable Food Franchise
Upsize Your Profit: 6 Steps to Running a Profitable Food Franchise
Upsize Your Profit: 6 Steps to Running a Profitable Food Franchise
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Upsize Your Profit: 6 Steps to Running a Profitable Food Franchise

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About this ebook

We understand many food franchisees have THREE COMMON PROBLEMS...
1. Little time because you are working harder than you expected.
2. You are making less money than you expected.
3. With a team that just doesn't do what you want.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherBookBaby
Release dateDec 1, 2014
ISBN9780992309329
Upsize Your Profit: 6 Steps to Running a Profitable Food Franchise

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    Book preview

    Upsize Your Profit - Elizabeth Gillam

    I dedicate this book to the people who spend their days in the exciting world of franchising.

    To the franchisees who jump out of bed to go to work each day; the franchisees who love creating a team to work in; the franchisees who work surrounded by their families; and the franchisees who love the freedom that franchising gives them to live lives they love.

    I hope the tips in this book help you to ASK the right questions during due diligence, then to ACE your business and your future.

    Thanks to those who came with me on this exciting franchising journey

    To my husband, Arthur – you have been my business partner ever since we became husband and wife. Most people say I do and agree to in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer; until death do us part. Maybe we should have added through multiple business models in there somewhere!

    To my three beautiful daughters – Rachel, Hannah and Phoebe. You have always been, and continue to be, my shining lights.

    Thank you for allowing me to be your mum and at times your boss; not many mothers get to see their daughters enter and develop in the working world. I got to see you develop your fortes first hand! It was a privilege to watch each of you blossom into the admirable women you are today.

    And to my mum, Alma, the one who consistently watches from the side and always shares a coffee with me and my constantly ringing phone – you are the one who showed me how to commit to something and see it through.

    I am the lucky one to have you all on this journey called life – love you!

    Finally, a big thank-you to those who helped turn this book into a reality – my Key Person of Influence team, especially Andrew Griffiths, my book mentor, for helping me pull out all that information rolling around in my head and put it into the framework that became the book. Your encouragement coupled with those in the KPI team got me through the tough times and really helped me finish this book writing journey.

    First published in 2014 by

    Franchisee Success

    PO Box 7425

    Toowoomba South QLD 4350

    ABN: 60421585465

    www.franchiseesuccess.com.au

    elizabeth@franchiseesuccess.com.au

    Copyright © 2014 Elizabeth Gillam

    The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

    All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored, posted on the internet or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the author and publisher of the book.

    National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

    Edited: Jacqueline Pretty

    Cover Design: DMS Creative

    Internal Design: DMS Creative and Michael Hanrahan Publishing

    Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing

    FRANCHISEE SUCCESS Elizabeth Gillam

    The stories, suggestions and opinions of the author are her personal views only. The strategies and steps outlined in the book may not work for everyone. Due diligence and thorough research is always recommended.

    eISBN: 9780992309329

    Contents

    Introduction

    Section 1 – Get Ready for Success

    Wow! You’ve Bought a Franchise

    Understanding Your Franchise Agreement

    Do your Due Diligence

    Make a Plan

    Keep Your End Vision in Mind

    Know Your Figures

    Fit-out & Equipment

    Franchise Training

    Think Staffing

    Have a Pre-opening Function

    Learn to Delegate

    Use Excel Spreadsheets (and Other Technological Goodies)

    Have I Left it Too Late?

    Section 2 – Analyse Your Business and Your Team – Where Are You Now?

    Step 1 – Analyse Your Business

    The Secrets of Your Point of Sale

    Key Performance Indicators – KPIs

    Getting Down and Dirty in Your Profit & Loss Report

    What Are Other Franchisees in Your System Doing?

    Step 2 – Analyse Your Team and Your Store

    Do a Staff Audit

    Store Audits – What Do They Really Tell You?

    Customer Audits – What Do They See?

    Section 3 – Customise Your Business and Your Team – Where Do You Want to Be?

    Step 3 – Customise Your Business

    Setting Your New KPIs – Success City, Here We Come!

    Back to Budgets

    Drawings – How Do I Pay Myself?

    Business Planning

    Step 4 – Customise Your Team

    Building a Team That Works for You and with You

    Your Training Plan – Let’s Get That Team Working for You

    Ramp up Your Rosters

    Section 4 – Enforce – Share, Improve and Monitor

    Step 5 – Enforce Systems in Your Team

    Share & Monitor KPIs – Get That Team to Work

    Maintaining a Team That Works for You

    Show Leadership – Who’s the Boss?

    Step 6 – Enforce Systems in Your Business

    Getting Value from Your Marketing Levy

    Get a Support Team

    Make Time for Life

    Growing Your Empire

    Conclusion – You! Getting the Best and Giving Your Best

    References

    Bibliography

    Biography

    Awards

    Introduction

    Within every franchise you will find the High Performance Franchisees. They are the franchisees who win all the awards at conferences; who the franchisor refers to all the time; who seem to have time to play golf; who have the designer handbags/ cars; and who have a team that runs the shop like a well-oiled machine.

    They are generally on the franchisor’s reference group, get to trial the new products, and always seem to have the biggest sales and highest average transaction values (ATVs).

    They are the franchisees who always have a swarm of fellow franchisees around them at conferences asking them how they get such great results. They seem to have years of experience behind them, or they were lucky to get in early and get the good shops and the good positions.

    The simple fact is they have been able to ACE their business.

    They Analysed their business and their team. They Customised their business by developing systems that could be put in place over and above the systems they bought with the franchise, and they also Customised their team by training them to work with these new systems, to give great customer service, and to deliver a quality product. Then they Enforced these new systems within the business and Enforced the team to action these systems in their day-to-day operations.

    This is what I did, although I didn’t realise it at the time.

    I bought my first franchise, Boost Juice Toowoomba, as a way to gain freedom from my humdrum 9-5 working life. I wanted to gain the flexibility to be a mum to my teenagers. While I did not have a retail background, the excitement of owning my own business overshadowed any fears I had. I was buying a system, right? So it was bound to all flow freely and easily, even without me being there! Here comes the money!!!

    Not. Within 18 months, or my second Christmas, as a franchisee, I was exhausted. I had no time, little money and a team that was just not following the processes. How did I get this so wrong? Worst of all, my husband had also followed me into this exciting journey by buying another food franchise.

    So I went back to basics and I ACEd my business. I set real goals, put a business plan into action and, by the next Christmas, we had met each and every one of those goals and had won a few awards along the way. After two and a half years, I had finally become the mum with the flexible working hours.

    My businesses were on track, and the systems I set up meant that each morning I could quickly check how my businesses were doing while I relaxed with my morning cuppa. I had peace of mind, I felt empowered, and then I discovered that this formula could be adapted to any franchise business!

    Being a High Performance Franchisee is possible for everyone. It does take commitment. You have to know your key performance indicators (KPIs). You have to commit to the six-step process over six weeks. But the reward is running a profitable business unit with a productive team that gives great customer service and produces high-quality products.

    You don’t need a degree in business or human resources, nor do you need to have years of retail experience. Your results will speak for themselves and, before you know it, you will be enjoying the life you wanted to create when you bought your franchise.

    The Farmer – from Top Crops to Top Shops

    I don’t want you to think that one day I just snapped my fingers and everything fell into place, though. In fact, you might be surprised to learn just how our systems developed (believe me – it’s not the technical, strategic process you expect!).

    My husband and I have worked all our married life in partnership, first as peanut farmers and then as franchisees. How do we do it? Well, that’s another book completely!

    At its most basic, when I changed from a wage earner to a business owner, it changed how we worked together. We had always worked as partners in a farming business where Arthur was the main knowledge source, the primary reason we were in this business if you will, and I supported him in the administrative areas. However, the main farming operation decisions always came from him. So, when I went into franchising, our roles reversed. Arthur became a part of a business that he didn’t really know how to run, even though he had taken just as much risk as me financially. This involved a lot of trust, like how I had trusted him to make the right farming decisions. Our trust in each other was mutual.

    In our first year as franchisees, Arthur continued to run the farming business, which he loved, but we were in drought. Ever since I had entered the farming world, every three or so years we had a smaller crop due to drought. It was never ending! At these times, Arthur would come into my store to help. Yikes! Here was the man who hated shopping centres, loud music and crowds, washing jugs in my Boost store – with loud music, heaps of people, and the rush, rush, rush of smoothies going out! Luckily he thrived on it and especially loved that, at the end of the day, even though he was exhausted there was always money in the till to bank. As anyone who is familiar with farming knows, you can come in exhausted every night for nine months and at the end of the crop there may be no harvest, therefore no money. In this retail gig you work hard one day and bank money the next – how easy!

    And so it was that, without any initial consultation with me, he decided to end his farming career and buy his own retail franchise. What a shift! Arthur was a born farmer; it was all he had ever done, all he had ever wanted to do, and now he wanted to own a shop?! To say I was not a supportive wife would be an understatement – I thought he had lost the plot. As I mentioned earlier, he hated shopping centres and crowds, and here he was buying a shop in a shopping centre with

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