How do you expand a successful commercial operation overseas without damaging the home-based business? It’s a pertinent question for the franchise arena where franchisees have a vested interest in the brand. Marketing manager Lerida Grant shares how Cafe2U has been able to expand successfully into international markets via a “slowly, slowly” approach.

Testing, testing

Firstly expanding into the UK via a joint venture in 2006, the first steps were always about testing the product concept before developing the franchise system. The success of this approach has been evidenced by the fact that Cafe2U UK now has almost 60 franchises across the UK and Ireland, remaining the only mobile coffee franchise in the UK.

Most recently Cafe2U has expanded into the US. The product concept underwent rigorous testing for over 12 months before the first franchise was granted to a master franchisee in July 2011. The US has a markedly different coffee culture to Australia so we were very mindful not to make assumptions about the consumer offering.

The most interesting part of the study was to understand that Americans readily accept the concept of having espresso coffee made fresh for them outside their workplace.

After ironing out all product and operational issues the next steps were to develop the franchise system to meet local conditions, both legal and geographic, and this required substantial input from US specialists.

The Australian system had been effectively replicated in the UK, yet we realised that the size and scale of the US required a system that allowed for greater geographic focus. Cafe2U developed a layered franchise system that met these needs.

All this demands substantial investment, and above all, a lot of patience.

Extra resources

Resource planning is vital to ensure the new project doesn’t detract from the business targets in the home market.

Cafe2U Australia started to put extra management resources in place at the same time as launching the product trial in the US so by the time the concept was fully tested and developed, the new team had consolidated and senior team members were able to focus on the international project.

In fact, we currently have a senior team member on secondment with the US master franchise to help them replicate both the system and the culture of Cafe2U. This wouldn’t have been possible unless the vision for the international organisational structure had been developed and implemented.

Since the US master franchise was awarded last July, two area representative franchises and three single unit franchises have been awarded and trained at the Cafe2U Academy in Sydney whilst the US training facility is being established.

During US franchisee training, there was a truly international moment when the franchisee described how she’d discovered Cafe2U visiting her UK based in-laws.

Stories like these show how an international presence can truly help a franchise system gain momentum.