Franchise or Not?

Having a successful hawker food business has re-defined itself and become more competitive these days. Modern food hawkers are finding ways to expand their food business so that there is scalability for the food business to grow exponentially. One of the most effective ways is to through Franchising.

To work towards the food franchise, it is important to start planning at the very beginning to produce the quality food product smoothly and consistently across various operators. The franchiser gains the franchise fee and from the food supplied to the franchisee, while the franchisee eliminates the hassle of re-designing the process from scratch and re-sourcing for food suppliers.

Besides that, the other main benefits are:-

1) Optimise the process of the making the food product

For every food business start up, it is very important to optimise the process in producing the quality food product you want to serve to your customers. The design of the process should consider various factors such as the selection criteria and the purchase of the food suppliers, the menu, the recipe, the food storage space and the food preparation area and design. Some of the hawker stalls do not have a back kitchen and the food hawker vendors need to consider the space constraints to store the food supplies. This also makes it more necessary to design the process well within the limited space.

2) Repeatability of the same quality food product

If the process is not repeatable, the business will not scale well. However, there may also be some concerns on the protection of the intellectual property rights for the business. Thus, to have the best of both world, some franchisers would take out certain portion of the process that may significantly affect the quality of food and simplify the process for the franchisee to produce the same quality food.

3) Scalability towards Autopilot

In any business growth, it is essential to consider the business scalability. When the business is repeatable and scalable, it allows the business to expand further for the unit franchise to expand into master franchise without affecting the quality of food across the operators.