Fast food and the Pie Face Bakery Cafe franchise

Not content with making it in the fickle fashion industry, Wayne Homschek and partner Betty Fong have turned their design skills to the humble pie in a new venture called the Pie Face Bakery Cafe franchise.

After finding success with their women’s fashion label, Paablo Nevada, former investment banker Homschek and fashion designer Fong wanted to do something that would appeal to a larger, broader market.

“We thought food would be interesting, particularly considering Australians’ love of food. We noticed that no one had created a national brand doing the classic Australian pie, even though there are national brands in other food categories such as pizza and burgers,” said Wayne Homschek.

The pair set out to make quality, gourmet pies with a gimmick. All the pies have their own faces piped onto them by hand, making each one an individual, while at the same time identifying the flavour inside. A smiley mouth denotes chicken, an S on its side is for steak, and a V is for vegetable.

In giving their pies faces, they also created a unique brand with the logo baked on each item. The brand is youthful, irreverent and reaches all ages. It also transfers well to other areas and products within the stores.

According to Homschek pies are the third most popular food product in Australia after sandwiches and hot chips. And, surprisingly, we Aussies consume a staggering 260 million per annum.

The pie franchise specializes in both gourmet savoury and sweet pies, and also makes healthy wraps, toasted sandwiches, muffins, cookies and brownies. All food is made in the Pie Face Factory, delivered daily to each of the stores and baked daily by the Pie Face Bakery Cafe pie dealers in front of the customers.

So far Pie Face Bakery Cafe is attracting a wide range of consumers, young and old, men and women. Somewhat surprisingly, fifty percent of its customers are women.

“We only use high quality ingredients and have kept our pastry thin and as reduced in fat as possible. Our customers include a lot of mothers and children and couples on the way home on Friday or Saturday night who want something to eat. Many of the women also buy our healthy wraps or mini pies,” said Homschek.

The fast food franchise pies can be eaten in-store or taken home, and the kids just love the stickers.

“The way we have done the face makes it a universal brand that we believe could work well in Europe and Japan,” says Homschek.

At this stage Pie Face plans to expand within Australia only. There are four Pie Face Bakery Cafe outlets in Sydney located in Bondi Junction Westfield and Bondi Junction Waverley Street Mall, Kings Cross and Parramatta. Discussions are under way with Westfield regarding another four locations.

Homschek says he and Fong hope to open at least 50 Pie Face stores within the next five years. In order to achieve this growth, Pie Face has embarked on a franchise program and is soon to grant franchises to suitable operators.

“We have been working closely with Deacons Consulting who has advised us on the franchise model. From day one we designed the concept to be suitable to grow into a national chain, possibly through franchising. We have worked out all the bugs with our four existing stores and now we think it is time to grow through franchising.”

Pie Face Bakery Cafe is currently looking for franchisees with strong customer service skills and good merchandising skills.

“The baking process is very simple and people can learn to bake our products in an hour.”

In terms of skills, number one is customer service and number two is merchandising.

“We want franchisees who are customer-friendly and enjoy serving people. We are also very focused on our merchandising as we have lots of products on display and they have to look good.”

Like any retail business hours can be long, so Pie Face believes that living close to where your business is located will be an advantage.

Total cost of a Pie Face franchise is expected to be between $200,000 and $300,000 depending on location.