Smart50 rank: 38
Revenue: $2,875,217
Growth: 49.90%
Founders: Steven Ashworth, 50, Richard Peil, 40
Head Office: New South Wales
Employees: 6
Industry: Accommodation, cafes and restaurants
Website: www.coffeeguru.com.au
Coffee Guru was an established franchisor with eight stores when Dean Crowe came on board as national manager in 2007.
He says the company was in heavy debt then with and was “struggling with cash flow due to the low fee structure not supporting the staff that were required to help the stores grow”.
Crowe took steps to increase cash flow, including taking distribution in-house and reorganising supplier contracts.
Those steps mean that today distribution provides far more money to the business than franschisee fees, allowing those to be kept low.
The model has been a success. Average annual revenue growth in the past three years has been 49.9% while revenue in 2010-11 was $2.9 million.
Crucial to keeping costs down has been ensuring rents for stores are not too high.
“What keeps me on my toes during the day is the forever battles with the landlords to keep rent at a reasonable level,” says Crow.
“Rental reviews are also much kinder outside of the major shopping centres like Parramatta and Centrepoint in CBD Sydney.”
In the next few months Crowe hopes to expand the Coffee Guru product range as well as lifting the average spend in stores.
“At a store level we are just working harder to capture the customers that are spending,” he says.
