Successful Entrepreneur and Hotcha founder James Liang launched the business in 2011 with a very clear plan to make his brand the first national Chinese take away franchise in the UK.
“Despite the enormous popularity of Chinese food all over the country, there were no national players of the type you see in the pizza, chicken and burger markets” said James. “Those highly successful brands all developed models that gave consistent quality without the prohibitive cost of a highly trained chef in every outlet – well we’ve done the same with Hotcha and we’ve proven it works.”
Hotcha has ten company owned stores in the South West of England with all food and sauces being freshly prepared in a centralised kitchen and delivered daily to each outlet. “It’s an incredibly efficient and cost effective system.”
The next stage in the company development is to franchise the business and again James is leaving nothing to chance. “The aim is to be the ‘Domino’s Pizza of the Chinese takeaway sector’. In fact we have recently appointed Clive Mellor, former senior executive at Dominos as our operations director and Andy Emmerson, who has substantial experience in the franchise sector including Dominos has been on board as a non-exec director for the past year.”
The company is now looking for experienced area developers to help it achieve its goal of opening 100 franchised stores within the next three years. “Given how difficult it is now to get a new franchise territory in the quick serve restaurant sector with an established brand, this should be a seriously exciting opportunity for anyone who wants to grow a multi-unit food business of their own. An average franchised Hotcha store should be generating revenues of up to £500,000 per annum with a gross profit margin of 70-75% This offers a very good return on the franchise fee of £180,000.”
Entrepreneur James started his first business (import/export of goods for the UK retail sector) when he left University College London with a Master Degree in Chemistry with Management, before launching Hotcha.
