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How a beverage franchise embraced best practice

Sarah Stowe

How can a franchise which has plans to open 200 stores across Australia in the next five years ensure HR compliance across the network?

That was the challenge for bubble tea business Cha time, which has set its sights on reaching the 200 store target under franchise arrangements.

Henry Wang Yao-Hui founded the first Cha time outlet in the Taiwanese city of Hsinchu in 2005, and the organisation has grown to more than 1,100 locations in 26 countries.

It launched in Australia in 2009 and now has 70 outlets, the newest store has just opened at the Casuarina Square Mall in Darwin.

Carlos Antonius, Cha time’s general manager, says the secret to Cha time’s success over here is its use of fresh ingredients, including premium Australian dairy produce.

Building on the customer experience

“Cha time has a huge range of iced teas including fresh fruit creations, and Taiwan-style milk teas. All Cha time iced teas are made fresh, right in front of you.

“Everything we do in every part of our business, is driven by the desire to make the Cha time experience a memorable adventure,” says Antonius.

And this approach certainly seems to be working. Cha time now has 2900 employees across the country and serves upwards of 20,000 cups of tea every day.

Best practices in the back office

With the Cha time experience a success with customers, the next stage of the company’s growth was to streamline back office administration.

“Of course, as we started to expand at a rapid rate, we realised that we needed to adopt best practices behind the scenes as well as front of house,” says Antonius.

“And because everything was paper-based, our reporting always took a considerable amount of time and effort.”

A new system has been introduced that is already saving time and money.

“Onboarding new employees, is now totally paperless. Employment contracts are signed and stored on the platform. And we enforce workplace policies with new employees through the same paperless onboarding process. New hires view the policies online and check a box to advise that they have reviewed the material. Again, this has saved us so much in admin time.

“We use the inbuilt Award Interpretation tools in the system so we know we’re always paying our employees at the correct rate of pay whatever their hours, whenever they work. Time and attendance data is documented and recorded in the system. We complete payroll on Employment Hero in a matter of minutes.”

Cha Time has recently been repositioned and the business is poised to launch a new employer scheme that gives staff access to discount financial services such as home loans, personal loans, income protection and health insurance, and savings with gym memberships and discounts at retail outlets.

“We’re really excited about launching this in the coming months,” says Antonius.

“For any business, and especially franchise operators, using Employment Hero is a really smart way to make sure you are compliant and leave no room for human error when it comes to HR obligations managing your people in accordance with Australian workplace legislation. It also scales with your business, so it will grow with you.”