specialfeature
What is the key to success when recruiting franchisees?
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university of Subway is an amazing computer- based training system that allows franchisees to learn about any aspect of the business, take courses and exams to test their knowledge
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and the quality of their food. We’ve had to get the best out of what is there. Our business is in better shape store by store than it was three years ago in terms of the quality and efficiency of what we’re doing.
How did you adapt to the climate? We’ve led with a strong value message and the product is flexible enough for us to be able to do that. Customers can go for an extremely indulgent product, like a whole breast of chicken with BBQ sauce and salad, or a relatively simple but very good ham sandwich on wheat bread with salad and dressing. You can sell a very high-end product or take it to a lower market value if we need to, depending on the customers’ needs.
Is the market starting to pick up? We are starting to see sales improvements and we’ve had a more stable 12 months than the previous year. I’m hoping to see the banking sector looking to help new development too.
What is Subway’s business strategy for the future?
The strategy for the UK and Ireland is to treble the number of non-traditional sites, including airports, bus and railroad terminals, business centres, convenience stores, petrol stations, cinemas, colleges, universities, department stores, motorway service stations, hotels, internet cafes, stadia and military bases. For us, it’s the next level, and it’s a market we know an awful lot about as we have in excess of 4,000 non-traditional sites through north America. It’s a perfect product for that on-the-move, quick turnaround sale. It’s because it’s a flexible product and system that it can meet so many different needs and this
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allows you to develop right across the market. We’re not looking for a narrow set of criteria. We don’t need a cooking suite, we bake bread – almost from scratch – which we do very well, but we’re not frying or grilling, it’s a simple system, and allows us to go into relatively small footprints at a relatively low cost.
Did you adapt the business for the Irish market?
No, but there are some small local differences, such as the chicken tikka sandwich and we’ve just opened our first halal store in Dublin. There is a lot of halal stores in London and Birmingham, and this allows us to enter into a Muslim country. In other parts of the world there are more challenges – in major developing markets such as India and China, you’ll see more adaptation. You may well be adapting the protein, the sauces, but it is still essentially the same product.
What are your plans for Ireland? So far, we have a Subway in a bowling alley, and several in forecourts, but we’ll be looking to open more in transit points or urban shopping points. We have almost 200 stores and between 40 and 50 franchisees. We’ve clearly been the fastest growing retail proposition in the country over the last 13 years, which is based on good franchisees. Several have 10 or more stores now and they’ve made a very good living out of it. We would expect to see between 30 and 50 new sites in the next three years.
How do you keep control of the brand? There is a formal monthly evaluation process and all franchisors are close to their stores and work with franchisees to make sure the standards are maintained.
A key part of our success is down to getting the right people in. We recruit on enthusiasm and attitude. Everybody can do it within reason, you don’t need a retail or food service background. We’re looking for those people who we believe are going to get out of bed in the morning with the same amount of enthusiasm and want to look after customers. If they haven’t got that, we’re not going to be able to train them to be good franchisees. We want desire, ambition and spark.
How has your recruitment strategy changed over the years?
We offer people the opportunity to go and work in a store before they make a decision. If they’re not sure and we’re not sure, we invite them to come along for a week and then we get a pretty good idea of how they are going to be. We have definitely not tried to develop a list of 5,000 items by which we measure people because I don’t believe it works, it is about personality.
What sets your franchise ahead when it comes to training?
Subway has one of the biggest online training facilities in the world. University of Subway is an amazing computer-based training system that allows franchisees to learn about any aspect of the business, take courses and exams to test their knowledge. It’s available in multiple languages worldwide. n
Subway in the newS
Subway has announced the opening of 8,000 non-traditional locations worldwide. notable stores around the globe include a riverboat on the Rhine in Germany, a baptist Church in buffalo, america and the construction site of the One world trade Centre in new york, where the restaurant is hoisted up to the next level as each floor of the 105 storey building is completed.
Paul Heyes
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