Find out why Spudbar is one QSR to watch
Spudbar a small QSR is enjoying 30% year on year same store sales growth. Find out why in this interview with their CEO Simon McNamara.
QSR Media: Spud Bar, tell us about it.
Simon: Spudbar offers gourmet salads and Spud’s – healthy casual lunch and dinner for around $8.50 to $12.50 . We have been working on the model over the past couple of years and have made many significant improvements. These include the menu, the look and feel of our Spudbars, our customer service levels and our branding. In regards to our food, we have brought on a top Melbourne chef who’s particular focus is sourcing local in-season produce from trusted suppliers. He has already added a range of salads and currently working on tweaking up the rest of the menu. Nearly all of our Spudbars have now been refurbed and we have been working how to develop a better culture with higher levels of customer service. The changes have been embraced by our franchisees as they have been seeing year on year same store sales increases of 30% for converted Spudbars.
QSR Media: What are some of the challenges you have faced trying to grow the brand?
Simon: We have had to educate the market around our misunderstood core product. For those who have not yet tried Spudbar, when they think ‘baked spud’ they think traditional jacket spud with sour cream and chives. It is hard for people to conceive the diversity and richness of our menu. So while we have a very loyal, almost tribal following of established customers, traditionally we acquire customers through word of mouth and this can be slow as friends tell friends its worth a try. The misconception is ‘health’. A large number of our existing customers are motivated by the healthy alternative we offer. Paradoxically, health has been a typical concern of people around potatoes. We have had a nutritionist work through our menu and are now getting the messages out there about how healthy we are in respect to most fast casual food offers. Our brand has just started to pop up in the media and we are getting a lot of high profile customers becoming regulars, but this has taken a while for the brand start enjoying mainstream visibility. So like smaller networks, this delay in brand awareness leads to fewer quality potential franchisees approaching us. Having said this, existing franchise partners are looking for more Spudbars. An existing franchise partner opened his second Spudbar in December in South Yarra and this has opened at the top of the sales ladder.
QSR Media: What are your plans for 2012?
Simon: 2 new Spudbars are opening in the first quarter of 2012. Following on from the success of our existing salads, our chef Matt Wilkinson is launching a larger salad range as well as tweaking up the rest of the Spud menu. We are improving our systems and tools including our training programs. This will help to ensure the fundamentals are in place to facilitate the growth program we about to embark on.
QSR Media: Franchise vs corporate stores, what's the breakdown, also how do you attract quality franchisees?
Simon: All but 2 stores are franchised. We don’t have any particular ratio we aim for. If we have strong franchisees in place when a new site comes up, we will franchise the outlet, otherwise, we are very happy to open the outlet as a company store.
QSR Media: Does the business suffer from any seasonality, ie are your sales higher in Winter?
Simon: Fortunately there is no seasonality in our business. I was pleasantly surprised about this as I expected there would be seasonality.
