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Vegan restaurant chain Soul Burger is now franchising

Sarah Stowe

Plant-based restaurant Soul Burger is the latest hospitality business to move into franchising.

The decision to franchise comes after running the three Sydney Soul Burger outlets through a corporate structure. Locations are in Glebe, Newtown and Randwick.

Soul Burger’s menu includes gourmet plant-based burgers, fries, shakes and snags. The hospitality firm works with leading plant-based brands including V2 Foods, Beyond Meat, Alternative Meat Company, Fable Meats and Pana Chocolate.

The environmental focus isn’t just on food however. Soul Burger’s company ethos revolves around building a better world one bite at a time.

This translates into initiatives such as working to reduce plastic use in restaurants, introducing a BYOP (bring your own packaging) discount initiative, partnering with green energy providers to offset carbon use, and recycling cooking oil. 

Founder Dr Amit Tewari says  there is plenty of potential in the plant-based food arena.

“This is much more than a trend, it’s a burgeoning sector that will only grow further as more people incorporate more plant-based food in their diet.

“Franchising is our avenue to getting more stores around Australia open, multiplying our impact, ensuring passion in store through owner-operators and forever changing the comfort food in the Aussie food scene.” 

After just a year of trading, Soul Burger won PETAs Best Vegan Burger in Australia Award in 2016. 

A Soul Burger franchise

Franchisees need a passion for plant-based food and for the Soul Burger brand and its philosophy.

Soul Burger has partnered with Loke to develop a loyalty customer app featuring a new internal online delivery platform – cutting out hefty commission costs charged by third party delivery options.

There are more than 14,000 loyalty app users and over 20,000 members of the “Beyond the Buns” loyalty program.

To emphasise the partnership element of the franchise relationship, Soul Burger has committed to develop a franchise model that avoids any rebate fees. 

Amit Tewari said  “Ours is a positive sum model because our franchise model will succeed only where our franchisees open stores and grow revenue. We won’t be making money any other way.”