Katherine Sampson, founder of Healthy Habits, says potential franchisees should be aware that fresh food deteriorates faster than frozen or packaged foods, so keeping a close eye on your orders and the rotation of stock is essential.

“The fact is that rotation is a huge issue in healthy fast food businesses because if franchisees don’t protect their stock and order properly they can have enormous wastage. Wastage could be the difference between making a profit and not making a profit one week. So rotation and storage and ordering is critical in a healthy business … In the fresh food business everything comes in fresh and if you don’t rotate an order properly you’ll lose money,” she says.

Healthy Habits franchisees also need to understand that with fresh food comes adequate refrigeration, which can be quite a significant overhead.

“We spend a lot of money on refrigeration to make sure that out ingredients are chilled properly and they’re stored properly. So I think from an equipment point of view, we do spend a lot of money on refrigeration. I mean our refrigeration units can be between $30,000 and $50,000, so that’s a very, very big cost,” says Sampson.

Luke Baylis from Sumo Salad says food wastage is less of a concern now that his business has grown and he has strong relationships with his suppliers. “We don’t have much wastage because we’ve got very good relationships with our suppliers and we get very fresh produce and we get it consistently all year. We’ve been able to do that as we’ve gotten bigger and bigger by getting better terms and doing a lot more product innovation. So we’ll now engage farms to grow a particular type of lettuce for us and do things like that, whereas before we had no buying power, so it was a lot more challenging.”

And while food wastage is not much of a concern, Baylis admits that food costs are higher in the health arena, but this doesn’t necessarily mean less profit for franchisees.

“The food costs are a little bit more expensive but customers expect that and they are willing to pay more for a healthy option,” he says. “As long as they perceive that there’s value there. So if they’re getting a great quality product, they’re willing to pay more for that. People aren’t necessarily benchmarking us against McDonald’s or KFC. They’re benchmarking us against almost like a cafe offering.”

At Go Sushi, ordering in exactly the right amount of ingredients is essential, not just to minimise wastage, but also to improve the franchise’s food safety standards.

“From a freshness point of view we make everything fresh in-store and so with our suppliers we have a ‘just in time’ method where we get delivered fresh what we need that day, we use it that day, we work a lot on production and wastage and how much we need to cater for busier times. It’s very controlled,” Nicola Mills from Go Sushi and Wasabi Warriors, says.

Go Sushi runs two workshops per year for franchisees where they are taught how to manage their stock and reduce the risk of having sushi sitting in the display for too long, or having too much or too little stock.

“We call it the ‘time display method’ and it’s all about the time that you put the sushi in to make sure it’s fresh … So what you don’t want to do is put a whole lot of sushi in the display and have it sit there for a couple of hours. How we display our food is relevant to how much we’re selling, so it’s turning over all the time and we’re making it all the time. It’s always fresh,” she explains.

Eating with your eyes

The layout and display of healthy food franchises is extremely important. If people can see the product and see that it’s fresh then they are more likely to make a purchase.

This is especially true at Go Sushi, says Mills, where customers don’t order off a menu, but simply from look at the food and choose exactly which products they’d like.

“At Go Sushi we don’t rely on menus, we rely on the food itself to sell, whereas if you go to McDonald’s or a KFC you pick something and it gets fried and packaged and you know it’s not going to be fresh anyway, but if you’re looking for a fresh product you want to see it. People eat with their eyes in the health arena.”

The displays at healthy burger franchise Grill’d are used not only to show the customers the freshness of the products, but to prove that burgers don’t have to be the naughty treat that they’ve always been seen as.

Simon Crowe, founder of healthy burger franchise, Grill’d, explains, “It helps debunk the myth relating to burgers being bad for you. We’re trying to change that perception dramatically and therefore that transparency and honesty that we talk about as a brand becomes more evident when the produce is on display. The product becomes the hero and there is nothing to hide so there is nothing to be concerned about from a consumer perspective.”

Putting burgers together right in front of the consumer does present a few challenges at Grill’d, like any healthy food franchise, where cleanliness is paramount. “We run an open kitchen and it’s in full view of every customer and that’s one of our strengths. It’s also a challenge because during the heat of battle everything is moving very fast and therefore it does become a challenge to keep it clean”.

At healthy sandwich franchise MYO, customers are in complete control of their diet because they actually compile their sandwich themselves. Ingredients and breads are on display and customers can wander around at their own pace, making their lunch as healthy as they like.

The benches and displays at MYO are obviously extremely important and managing director, John Smith says that while the displays at MYO are probably more expensive than they would be in a regular fast food outlet, especially when refrigeration is considered, the company saves money on staffing.

“Staffing is probably less because obviously you’re not making hundreds of sandwiches in advance. The preparation takes place during the course of the day and obviously someone supervises the bains at all times to make sure that everything is up to scratch and clean,” Smith says.

“It’s very easy for us to do that, to keep the presentation high. But we obviously have to make sure that we’re selling a high quality product because it’s all bought by the eye, which makes the customer far more discerning.”