Chapter 10

Picking the franchising fruit

I never even considered having just one juice bar. I always knew that Boost was going to be big (which shows just how naive I was, and lacking in any true knowledge of what was involved to make this prediction a reality).

In the very early days, I also hadn’t considered how exactly I was going to create all these stores. I simply thought I’d have another and another and another … Unfortunately, as the brand expanded, I simply couldn’t hire the high-quality people I needed as well as expand. I realised early that if we wanted to grow quickly, people in the company needed to have ownership. There’s nothing like having everything on the line to make a business work well. Enter franchising.

I’d never had anything to do with franchising, and didn’t really understand how it worked. We met Rod Young, a franchise industry consultant, through a friend of a friend, and approached him to assist us in setting up the Boost Juice franchise. I always think that if you’re going to do something, you should do it right, and getting Rod on board was definitely the right thing — at the time, he was the best in the business.

Another important factor was getting the right franchise manager. I’ve always seen our franchise manager as the gatekeeper of the Boost Juice name. I imagine her standing in a knight outfit (with a very sharp sword) on a plank outside the Boost castle, and I know that she will not let the wrong people into my business (or our business, as she would say). We do not tolerate mediocrity. Believe it or not, the best decisions we have made involve the people who are not with us!

The Boost franchising method

For Boost Juice, franchising has been a wonderful way to get amazing people into our business and to create ownership in individual Boost stores. We call our franchisees ‘Boost partners’ and in a sense that’s what they are. Franchisees pay Boost an ongoing royalty — a percentage of turnover — for the right to use our brand on a single store. They are buying into the brand and the support we give them. The statistics are very straightforward and, overall, you’re more likely to run a successful business if it is a franchise business; however, buying a franchise business is not a blanket guarantee.

As the franchisor, we get two major benefits from the relationship. The first is growth of the brand. We were listed in BRW in early 2005 as Australia’s fastest growing franchise network. The second is the quality of the people you bring into your business to run the individual stores. Both the franchisor and franchisee have the same motivation to be successful, and both parties have everything on the line to make it work; this is a great motivator.

It’s not easy to become a Boost franchisee. We are known within the franchising world as being incredibly selective — and we’re proud of that. Our existing partners, in particular, love this reputation because they know that any new partner has undergone rigorous assessment. We approve roughly 11 per cent of applicants as Boost partners — and we get around 50 to 100 applications every month.

We select franchisees based on the philosophy, ‘It’s not necessarily about where they’ve been, but where they want to go’. We have some partners whose previous retail experience has made their transition into our stores quite smooth, and yet many others with no previous experience who have taken it all in their stride and ended up operating very successful stores. The only common stream among the partners is passion for the brand, following the system and understanding the concept.

We often have applicants who are interested in Boost only because of the financial reward they believe they’ll get from owning a Boost franchise. While we appreciate that all applicants are interested in a financial return from investing in Boost (after all, they’re not going to go into a business to lose money), this cannot be the only reason. They need to have a passion for healthy living and amazing customer service skills.

The culture of our company is the most important thing to protect — if we compromise on the quality of the people, we compromise on the brand. One of the reasons we are so successful is because we have incredible partners fostering our culture and giving our customers the phenomenal Boost experience every day. If we dropped our standards, they would drop them too.

I have heard a lot of stories about partners who have cried tears of joy at the news they’ve been approved as a Boost franchisee and, on the other hand, stories of unsuccessful applicants who have phoned to rant and rave. (Including one person who sent Boost a doctor’s invoice because his wife had to be sedated after hearing the news of their fate.)

Boost’s recruitment process is transparent. On our website, we’ve posted answers to around 90 per cent of the questions we’re most frequently asked, right down to how much it costs to become a franchisee. It’s quite an intense process. Applicants have to fill out an eighteen-page questionnaire and send it to us with an application fee. We then call them for a chat. That’s step one. There are another four stages to pass before approval is granted. The final stage is an interview with the CEO of Boost.

Once franchisees are in the system, they take part in a three-week training program. They work in their store with one of our experienced people for support. They have full access to our team and we do our best to ensure they succeed. To help keep things on track, we have audit programs as well as mystery customers who visit every store every month to make sure the service and quality is as high as it should be. The reason we do all this is that we are not prepared to settle for mediocrity; this process helps us to get the right people in our business, and keep those people acting in line with our values. To us, the brand is everything; we do everything we can to uphold its integrity. It is one of Boost’s greatest strengths.