Soul Burger branches out into franchising

Australia’s premier plant-based restaurant Soul Burger, is ready to turn a new leaf as it launches into franchising. 

After 4 years of running the Soul Burger brand through a corporate structure, a decision was made to develop a comprehensive franchise program with the help of the DCS Franchise Group and partner with motivated, passionate franchise owners to grow the business and increase its presence in the Australian food scene.

Founded by Dr Amit Tewari, Soul Burger surged dramatically in 2015 by capturing an enthusiastic customer base that cares about their climate impact and food choices. By offering gourmet plant-based burgers, fries, shakes and snags, the mission behind its menu is to offer an amazing, satiating plant-based comfort food experience.

With it’s fun, chilled-out, welcoming atmosphere and incredible plant-based menu, there is a huge space for Soul Burger to grow. It is a “go to” destination for millions of vegans around the world, with constant requests for Soul Burger to open interstate. Soul Burgers Sydney locations are constantly reviewed, visited and profiled from eager bloggers, athletes and celebrities all wanting to be part of the action. Previous famous eaters and tweeters/instagramers include Ne-Yo (US rapper), Maya (US Singer), DJ Tigerlily (Aus DJ), Peter Siddle (Aus Cricketer), Morgan Mitchell (Australian Runner), David Campbell (TODAY Extra Host) & more!

Award recognition

The plant-based business has also experienced some well-deserved recognition, having recently been named as the 2020 Best Innovation category winners for Food and Beverage at the QSR Media Sandhurst Awards. The winners were announced during the virtual awards and conference ceremony held on 23 June via Webcast.

Speaking to Amit after the awards announcement, he was extremely happy with the result, saying that, “We’re stoked we won this national innovation award. For a young food outfit with 3 stores, it’s great reassurance that plant-based foods are being recognised as innovative by the broader food scene. This is much more than a trend, it’s a burgeoning sector that will only grow further as more people incorporate more plant-based food in their diet. Franchising is our avenue to getting more stores around Australia open, multiplying our impact, ensuring passion in store through owner-operators and forever changing the comfort food in the Aussie food scene!.”

Other awards Soul Burger has won include PETAs Best Vegan Burger in Australia Award in 2016.

The Soul Burger franchise opportunity

The passion behind franchising for Soul Burger has been to increase store presence around Australia and improve quality and commitment in store by recruiting a network of owner-operators. They’re searching for franchisees who have a passion for plant-based food, as well as a love and connection to the brand and its ethos. It's a franchise business that partners will be proud of and enjoy spreading the love through excellent customer service and high delivery standards.

Soul Burgers are game changers. They are a brand new franchise that seeks to do things differently. They envision truly partnering with franchisees and have made a commitment to develop a franchise model that avoids rebate fees in its entirety.

Founder Amit Tewari has said, “There is a lot of heat on franchise models and there's good reason for it. We’re seeing many franchise models forget about focusing on increasing revenue through constant innovation, and instead get stagnant with bloated head offices and make their money through collecting rebates from goods sold to franchisees instead. That’s a negative sum game and it's not how we intend to operate. Ours is a positive sum model because our franchise model will succeed only where our franchisees open stores and grow revenue. We won’t be making money any other way.”

Diversifying Revenue

While committing to shun rebates in its franchisor model, Soul Burger has aimed to pioneer new revenue streams in store. They have partnered with LOKE to develop a loyalty customer app featuring a new internal online delivery platform - cutting out hefty commission costs charged by third party delivery options. Their own white label delivery app also functions as a loyalty wallet engaging customers constantly, allowing them to collate points, offering exclusive merchandise and build their own database. They have also introduced web-site ordering as part of their loyalty platform. In just 3 retail sites around Sydney there are currently over 14,000 loyalty app users and over 20,000 members of the “Beyond the Buns” loyalty program.

Keen to find out more? Enquire now! #soulburgertribe