Check out our video: “A day in the life: Food Retail”.
What’s it like to run a retail food franchise? Three franchisees in the caf_, salad and pizza arenas share the highlights and challenges of daily business:
Jamaica Blue
Nitin Verma starts his day at 7.45am, six days a week. “You need to be back up for everything, so I know how to make coffee, how to cook breakfast, how to prep up the cabinet, I know how to clean.
“I think the busiest expense in running the business is the rent.
“For the food costs, arranging suppliers was a breeze, you don’t have to worry about sourcing the best, freshest products from different places. FoodCo has a preferred supplier list and you can choose between a few; whoever has the best price, the best delivery times.
“The main challenges are the hours, and there is a lot of staff turnover, and the competition.”
Sumo Salad
Ibrahim Bilen starts at 7am and finishes about 4 or 5pm. When he arrives at work he prepares the salads and does some cleaning. About 2pm he starts prepping for the next day.
“Keeping the ingredients fresh every day is the main thing you have to do.
“I work five days a week Monday to Friday because I have a manager at the weekends and it’s not so busy. We get busy between 11.30 and 2 o’clock. Our customers are mostly business people and some students.”
Pizza Hut
Scott Villiers runs the franchise with his wife, and they split the roles. “My wife looks after the operations, the product, staff, training, customer service; I look after more of the business and financial side – accounting, pay role, all the components people might think a bit more boring.
“The day starts in the store at 9.30, we open for trade at 11 and we close at 10pm every day except Fridays and Saturdays where we close at 11pm.
“However there are still tasks to do after that. We have to clean the store, prep for the next day, look at our stock levels, make sure our use by dates are correct.”
On top of this there are all the other things that sit outside the operational factors of the store.
You can hear from the franchisees themselves in this video.