Find out why Paleo Cafe is a QSR concept on buzz right now
It's based on the popular Paleo philosophy.
On 3 October 2012, Marlies Hobbs, together with her husband Jai, opened the doors of Paleo Café, a health food store and cafe located at Cairns, Queensland. With the help of social media and local print publications, buzz sparked about the latest café in town.
The brand is focused on supporting their customers in achieving ‘optimal health’ by means of a healthy way of eating and shopping based on the Paleo philosophy.
The Paleo Diet, sometimes referred to as “Caveman diet,” is based on the kind of food, hunters and gatherers from the Paleolithic era consumed.
It promotes the intake of food found in nature, such as seafood, lean meat, nuts, vegetables, fruits, and eggs. This type of diet, however, excludes eating dairy products, refined sugar, cereal grains, and other processed food that are very popular nowadays.
In fact, the brand revealed that a Paleo Café Cookbook is currently being drafted, which they hope to publish later in the year or early next year with the help of the Messenger Group.
Growth and expansion plans
Since its opening, the Paleo Café has become one of the busiest cafes in the Cairns area and has already gained quite a number of regular customers, said owner and Business Development Manager, Marlies Hobbs.
To further the brand’s growth, Paleo Café decided to venture into franchising and signed on its first franchisee at the end of March this year.
Building the brand’s portfolio, new stores in Paddington Brisbane and Bondi Junction Sydney are set to open by October this year. By December of this year, another café in Townsville is scheduled to open as well.
“We love the idea of franchising as it is hard to manage company owned cafes from afar, especially with a young family. They need local passion and drive to ensure there is a strong sense of community and education built around the cafes.
“We also love seeing other people succeed and want to share our legal and business experience to help our franchisees reach new levels of personal and business success,” said Hobbs.
Hobbs believes that the popularity of the concept and the combined legal and business experience that she and her husband shares, are the reason behind the brand’s fast franchising and growth.
“Our model is unique with a low franchise fee, fixed ongoing fee ($500 p/w), no percentage of profits or marketing levy. We are focused on building a strong community amongst our franchisees and this is already working very well.
“We avoided systems that cause disgruntled franchisees as we want to ensure a happy and successful business relationship with them at all times and avoid a top heavy large scale head office which ultimately adds expense to franchisees,” added Hobbs.
Paleo Café aims to gain ten franchisees before the end of the year, and hopes for a sensible steady growth of approximately an addition of 20 more cafes in 2014.
The brand shared that negotiations throughout major towns in the country, such as Melbourne, Gold Coast, Manly, and Adelaide are currently underway, and plans to move on to New Zealand is set to launch over the next two to four years.
