Anthea Earnshaw let her acting career take second place to become a
Pizza Hut franchisee. Now she takes a leading role in her business and works in the supportive atmosphere of Yum! to grow her franchise businesses.
As well as acting, Anthea has been a drama teacher but she and her partner Troy searched for something else and in August 2006 she stepped out of the schoolyard and into her first
Pizza delivery franchise.
“We were looking into franchising for about five years. We looked through all the major ones and came pretty close with a couple but there were just a few things we didn’t feel comfortable with or didn’t like about the process,” said Anthea.
“When we decided we liked the feel of the pizza industry we found that we were ticking all the boxes on our list with Yum! Restaurants’ brand, Pizza Hut. Yum! is a good strong company. They have a lot of major brands in their group and basically, the operations and the systems within the Pizza Hut network are just fantastic.”
Anthea met a lot of people at Yum! through the selection process and felt they really cared about who their franchisees were. It wasn’t simply a case of who had the money to invest. That supportive attitude suited Anthea because she had big plans for her financial investment.
She was upfront about her ambition to own multiple stores and Yum! management, in turn, were clear on the type of people they wanted in their team.
“What we look for in a franchisee, is someone who is a hands on owner operator, who is enthusiastic about the Pizza Hut business and is personally committed to driving sales in their local area. Pizza Hut is like all small business, it requires dedication, drive and persistence,” said National Business Development Manager, Stephen Hazard.
“We identified early Anthea’s motivation, work ethic and her ability to relate to people. The pizza industry is highly competitive and requires hard work and commitment which we identified in Anthea. Combined with Pizza Hut’s extensive training and support systems, Anthea is now looking at her third outlet.”
It didn’t take long. Starting with Miranda, in Sydney, then Jannali six months later, Anthea is now getting ready to purchase her third outlet.
While her other career choices may seem unrelated to running a
Pizza franchise, Anthea has drawn on her experience to develop staff and lead a team of people in a structured Pizza Hut environment where people capability comes first.
“Although there is structure within the company, everyone is very supportive of each other and the whole idea is to keep the brand together. There is no competition or any kind of nastiness that we’ve seen.”
Acting has become a hobby but Anthea still enjoys time off from managing her stores to attend auditions and to take part-time roles
15-Feb-2008