Pie Face Bakery Cafe commences franchising program granting three new franchises

Pie Face Bakery Cafe , has officially launched its franchising program, signing three new franchisee’s. With 20 company owned stores and after six years in operation and one trial franchisee joining in February 2008, the pie franchise group now believes it is ready to start franchising its stores.

Pie face has signed its first three franchises that are to be launched in Melbourne, Sydney International Airport, and to take over an existing company owned Sydney CBD store.

The pie franchise company now feels that it has acheived its objective of working through the business model including product, store format, supply chain and franchise support operations. In conjunction with granting the three new franchises, the pie franchise company has commenced a comprehensive franchise marketing program to target suitable potential franchisees.

After investing over $10 million into the Pie Face model, the founders believe it is critically important to partner with the right people expand Pie Face into the national pie franchise chain which is planned.

Adrian McFedries, Principal of franchise consultancy DC Strategy said “After initially advising Pie Face in 2004 on its franchise strategy and working out its initial franchise documentation and program, Pie Face has since invested significantly to take a very cautious approach to franchising. This approach is quite unusual as the typical approach by start up chains is to bring a brand and concept to franchise as quickly as possible. Most start up chains have limited capital and try to franchise their system as soon as possible to defray the capital associated with building company owned stores – often before the business is really ready to franchise. Pie Face is one of the best capitalised start-up food chains we have seen – with probably 3-4 times the capital of most other franchises we typically work with. We believe this is a key strength of the Pie Face business as it has made many of the mistakes that newer franchisors make on its own dime so to speak – making for a much stronger format and business model. We believe the Pie Face brand and concept is very strong and we have been advocates of the company franchising from the outset."