Multi-unit Franchising Summit Taps into Aussie Mood for Business Growth

Multi-unit franchising is a growing element in the Australian marketplace as proved by the 170 plus franchisors and franchisees who attended the third annual Multi-Unit Summit recently in Melbourne. One of the guest speakers at the summit was David Ostrowe, who owns a chain of Burger King stores in the US.

Ostrowe told Franchising, “It was an honour and a privilege spending time with the Franchise Relationships Institute and their Summit participants. The Australian franchise landscape is poised for explosive growth over the next several years. The efficiencies of scale that can be achieved by both franchisor and franchisee will lead to a stronger national brand presence and improved profitability for all parties.”

Franchise professionals from top brands attended the summit to focus on better ways to run multi-unit operations. The event was the biggest gathering of an equal number of franchisors and franchisees from different brands anywhere in the world, according to Greg Nathan, founder of the Franchise Relationships Institute which organised the popular event.

Nathan said “There was massive sharing in good business principles and practices, particularly staff management, business structuring, financing, IT and management control systems. The support and empathy shared between people from different brands was quite extraordinary.”

In some cases it was even life-changing, said Nathan, citing one multi-unit operator with nine businesses who said before the summit he felt like selling up. But this all changed after a peer session in which stories of the challenges of expansion were shared by successful operators from different brands; the multi-unit franchisee realised he was heading in the right direction and now has plans to expand even further.