Chatime is on target to open its expected 10 tea breweries in 2020. The business has been adapting its franchise recruitment to Covid-19 times, keeping its growth goal in clear sight.
Andrew Benefield, the bubble tea chain’s chief development officer in Australia, said six Sydney stores, two in Melbourne and one each in Adelaide and Perth are set to open. Coming up is expansion into more Western Sydney suburbs.
“We’re positive about next year; a third of our network has remained in positive sales growth throughout the Covid period, especially strip-store locations,” Benefield said.
Through lockdown in Melbourne, 21 stores remained open, 11 closed.
“Obviously some business partners were struggling but we endeavoured to support them by providing relief via increased marketing efforts, adapting the supply chain and increasing communication across the network to stay up to date with Covid regulations,” he said.
Now some of the stores in Victoria are already showing positive sales growth, year on year.
“The move to electronic payment and engagement has enabled us to continue to grow our loyalty database that now has over 750,000 members giving us an awesome database to market to,” he told Inside Franchise Business Executive.
Benefield said this year the business has shifted its growth focus to maximise returns on effort.
“Franchise marketing efforts were focused online to engage and nurture the existing database,” he said. “We have developed a Franchising 101 series on YouTube to give our database regular updates on general franchise information and issues.
“We ran a series of recruitment webinars targeting every state across the country, achieving more than 300 registrations.”
The Taiwanese bubble tea concept Chatime has been operating in Australia since 2009 and has built up a network of 125 outlets across the country. Worldwide the brand has more than 800 stores, predominantly in Asia.
