First established in 2004, it wasn’t until 18 months ago that founders Bill and John Fotiadis decided to expand and create a well organised head office team at Souvlakihut.
The company comprised the two founders, a general manager, supply manager and two trainers, but according to John Portarianos, national operations manager, the Fotiadis brothers knew they needed more hands on deck.
“They were confident in their own abilities in regards to how the business was growing, but what they didn’t have the experience with was franchising and, as with any franchise system, you’ve got to have good processes, procedures and policies in place to ensure that everybody knows exactly what they’re accountable for,” he explains.
Souvlakihut, which has 37 stores, is in the process of expanding its team to manage growth; including the appointment of a Victorian operations manager. A sales and marketing manager has also come on board recently, and the franchise is now looking for a dedicated CEO to allow the founders to focus on other areas of growth.
The franchise is not, however, at a point where it can employ a separate individual for each role. “We all do multiple roles here, so unfortunately we don’t have the luxury of having multiple people to do singular roles.
“But at the moment it works well for us because we’re at a small enough level that we can juggle our time efficiently and effectively. There will come a time in the future, and not too far in the future, where we are going to have to drop a couple of those hats and bring somebody on board to pick those up,” says Portarianos.
The smaller the franchise is, the more multi-tasking its employees have to do, and this can obviously be a very stressful time for everyone in the business. But according to Portarianos, it’s all part and parcel of growing your business.
“Every single franchise system has gone through this,” he says. “Somebody would start it at some point in time and they would have had to do everything at one time. For us it’s been no different and for other franchise systems, much smaller ones, the CEO or managing director would probably be delivering products to stores.
He’d also be working a store. Bill and John, for the first two years of the business, were actually in stores working 40 to 50 hours a week, if not more.
“You’re never going to be able to start a franchise system with 40 or 50 stores straight away. It’s going to take time to grow and somebody has to do the work.”