FRESH OFF THE PRESS: Opportunities for Franchised QSR Brands in 2024

Quick Service Restaurants (QSRs) are now operating in a more competitive environment, which is made more challenging by rising interest rates, changing consumer expectations, home delivery and accelerating technology and innovation.

And gone are the days when you could easily find junior staff to make and deliver pizza.. 

This is the experience of the DC Strategy franchise development team. They have seen this trend emerging during the pre-Covid period and accelerating since Covid changed the Australian market and the world forever. 

They see franchising will play a bigger part in growing QSR networks and brands across Australia and the world. 

DC Strategy has developed many of Australia’s most successful franchise networks and reinforce their view by explaining there is not one national foodservice network of any scale in Australia that has not embraced franchising. 

And only brands with a full business format franchise model have made a success of national and international development. 

They believe that the new generations of young people new to the workforce are Digital Natives and are more interested in building their financial freedom through online gaming, online gambling, digital marketing and being influencers.

The QSR job market will have retention difficulties in the coming years without a franchise development program. 

The Chairman of DC Strategy, Rod Young says QSR players must start reflecting on how they can improve their human resource policies and create a positive organisational culture by embracing franchising to have motivated owner-operators working in their franchise networks with their employees at the customer end of their business. 

Young says more sophisticated franchise network development, tailored franchise agreements, and careful recruitment, screening and selection of franchisee candidates will leverage franchising as a HR strategy. 

Better franchisees in well developed franchise brands work with their individual employees to provide advancement opportunities, work-life balance, better benefits, benchmark incentives, and, most importantly, purpose-driven tasks, which is a top priority for younger workers.

Franchisors must also capitalise on technology and operational and supply chain efficiencies to improve network revenue and profit targets.

Young says DC Strategy have demonstrated that well developed franchise programs with quality franchisees significantly outperform corporately owned stores and less sophisticated franchised competitors. 

The DC Strategy team believe automation will play a big part in future optimisation, and they foresee robotics will progress in the market during 2024. 

They also believe that strategic partnerships with distributors and key suppliers will play a big part in cutting the cost of goods for their franchisees. 

These partnerships need to have structured trading terms that benefit consumers, franchisors and their franchisees, to be successful. 

But Young warns that franchising in itself is not a silver bullet. He says that while franchising has proven to be the most dynamic management and marketing strategy of the 21st Century and built significant Enterprise Value and generational wealth for many founders and stakeholders, franchising is only as good as the franchise strategy, structure, economics, agreements and franchisee recruitment and selection policies that underpin the franchise program.

DC Strategy (www.dcstrategy.com) is the region's premier franchise development consultancy. It is based in Australia and operates across Australasia, Asia and the US with offices also in Hong Kong. It has worked with many of Australia’s most successful franchise systems and has expanded Australian franchises into international markets and bought several major international brands into the Australasian markets. 

For more information call Rod Young 0418 100 506