Flave, the fledgling plant-based restaurant chain co-founded by ex-Zambrero CEO Stuart Cook, will franchise next year.
Cook told Franchise Executives the young brand will expand in Australia, and launch in India, in 2023.
“Our goal is to open up a thousand locations over the next 10 years, and that’s not in Australia. That’s probably about 50 in Australia and the rest overseas.”
A heads of agreement deal will set up a master franchise arrangement for expansion across India.
Cook believes the plant-based food sector could take off as Mexican food did in the mid 2000s.
“We play in a space that is rapidly growing and there is a lot of money coming in there, but there’s no clear front runner at this stage.”
Cook and his wife Samantha launched the concept a year ago to take plant-based food options to the next level.
Flave cater for the end customer experience
The Flave concept developed from the couple’s change to a vegan diet to help Samantha recuperate from a bacterial infection.
“We started feeling better, we dropped weight, but we realised that we were always a bit of an afterthought when it came to restaurants .
“And so selfishly we want to create a brand that we could go and eat up but also one that we thought that could start to try and move the needle, dispelling some of the myths or myths around plant-based food.
“Now there’s a lot of money that has been pouring into the product side. So there’s Beyond Meat, Impossible Burgers and all that space, but there’s not a lot of money that has been poured into the actual end customer experience of that.”
Cook said the new brand will customers the best on the market of the alternative plant-based proteins and provide sustainable catering options for corporates.
“The way we currently eat is not sustainable. And we are starting to see that in terms of climate change and animal agriculture is one of the biggest proponents of that.”
Flave recently opened a mini restaurant in the David Jones Bondi Junction food court. This set-up is a trial through November, December and January.
Cook was responsible for rocketing the Zambrero restaurant footprint to 100 stores in six and a half years.
“And so hopefully over the next 10 I can do the same with this Flave concept,” he said.
