Oliver’s Food – this health-focused fast-food restaurant has cleaned up its act after many years of poor performance. They expanded too quickly too early, and that left them with very little money to spare on improving their food, restaurants, or lowering prices. This left them direction-less and staring down the face of bankruptcy. Then EG Fuels came to the rescue, a company which owns most of the Woolworth’s Caltex petrol stations in Sydney. They made a deal with Oliver’s whereby they’ll build little Oliver’s stores within their petrol stations all over Sydney – they’ll pay for the restaurant set-up costs, they’ll pay Oliver’s for the product, and they’ll pay just about everything else. In return, they’ll give Oliver’s a cut of all the sales they make. This franchise model is very valuable and has allowed the likes of McDonald’s to expand very rapidly around the world. This also gives Oliver’s the money it needs to make it’s existing restaurants on Australian highways a little more pleasant – and you can see the evidence already. Considering that Oliver’s biggest issue was running out of money, now this issue has resolved, there’s big potential here.
Domino’s Pizza Australia – a great franchise that has obliterated it’s competition (Pizza Hut) through the use of technology which improves the customer experience as a whole. The stock is a little pricey at $70+, but its a high-quality business so keep an eye on it.