The ice-cream giant Baskin-Robbins has announced the launch of its latest UK franchised retail store in London's Chiswick. Opened by Bob and Ash Ghataaura, two brothers, the store looks set to experience great success because of its excellent location and strong brand recognition.
Ash already had a strong background in the food and hospitality sector and carried out research into prospective franchises before deciding that Baskin-Robbins was the right brand to invest in with his brother. He explained that he looked at a range of different franchises before deciding on the Baskin-Robbins brand. He was convinced by the global reach and 'up and coming' nature of the brand, as well as the franchise model that it operates. Franchisee and franchisor maintain a strongly collaborative approach to their relationship, which drives success. These two factors in particular were the ones that convinced Bob and Ash to invest in their own franchised store.
The speciality ice-cream brand of Baskin-Robbins was founded back in 1945 and has since become the world's biggest chain of specialist ice-cream stores. It now sells more than 300 million ice-cream scoops each week across its network of 6,700 stores, which operate in 50 countries.
It is part of the global Dunkin' Brands group and has over 100 franchisee-operated retail stores and concessions in the United Kingdom alone.
The Chiswick store opening was celebrated by Bob and Ash on 6 October, when they welcomed their customers to the fun and engaging store. They said that the previous few weeks had been hugely exciting as the main launch had followed a 'soft opening' which had already been a great success. The brothers admitted that the venture to date had been a great deal of hard work, but explained that they had thrived on the challenge.
Certainly the brothers had already taken advantage of the excellent training on offer from Baskin-Robbins, which is known to be one of the best in the franchise industry. This initial training was carried out at the store in Colindale so that the brothers could learn from a successful existing operation. After the training, Ash and Bob decided to hire a store manager with previous experience running a Costa outlet so that he could bring plenty of relevant experience to the new Baskin-Robbins store.
Already the ambitious brothers are researching possible locations for their second franchised store and they aim to open ten Baskin-Robbins retail outlets in total. The brand currently provides ample opportunities for franchisees to invest in multiple stores and build a portfolio of five or more, requiring liquid capital of at least 300k. The returns are attractive, with a typical portfolio of five stores offering a realistic turnover potential of 1 million during the first full trading year and an EBITDA projection of between ten and fifteen per cent.
The team at Franchise Expo would like to wish Ash and Bob Ghataaura every success in their new venture and we look forward to following their progress.
