Presented at the 2009 MYOB Excellence in Franchising Awards, this award is for excellence in franchising practice by a franchise system established for more than five years.

The judges’ comment: This is back-to-back success for the team at 7-Eleven who took out the Franchisor of the Year Award in 2008 and has demonstrated a superior application of franchising and, subsequently, how its system operated more effectively in a mature and highly competitive market. There was particular emphasis on
continued development of the system and the business model.

7-Eleven CEO, Warren Wilmot says, The award is testament to the strength of our franchise system, the quality of the people working for us and 7-Eleven’s commitment to its franchisees.

So what accounts for being able to pull off a back-to-back win?

In one sense to be able to win it one year probably suggests we should be able to win it multiple times unless another system suddenly has a dramatic improvement in what they do and what they offer. But on the other hand we would like to think we have a good robust system that continues to improve and innovate both in what we offer to customers and how we go about managing and interacting with our franchisees.

We really have an extremely solid full service model that takes most of the tension out of the majority of other franchise arrangements. I also think we embrace franchising as adding significant value to our business, and we also enjoy and embrace the cultural diversity of our franchisee group.

Our model ensures a true partnership in generating profits for both parties, while removing much of the angst from franchisees that often go with running small businesses.

Good retailing also accounts for its success, he says. We strive to be a really good retailer. I think we have taken significant strides to being a better retailer, who happens to operate via a franchise model. I think we enhance our franchise system significantly by concentrating on customers and retail first, and then overlay excellent franchise systems. This approach ultimately benefits the franchisees the most.

Merchandise sales growth (like for like) for financial year 2008 to 2009 was 5.43 per cent up on the prior year while overall merchandise growth was 8.6 per cent up, Wilmot reveals.

So what can an incoming franchisee expect to see in the network next year?

We continue to innovate in food service categories and have some new concept stores in the market. We also are developing a suite of e-services which include lottery and money transfer, and as public transport tickets become store value cards we will be one of the first systems to market to deliver these.