Franchisee performance is the focus for barbecue and fried chicken chain Chooks which is sponsoring its franchisees to complete a Beyond Survival training course worth $25,000 through Westpac. Chief chook Steve Hansen said the first two modules of the course were completed by most franchisees at the franchise group’s first quarterly franchisee conference in February.

The Beyond Survival training course is helping Chooks franchisees to make better decisions based on the knowledge of what their true business position is weekly, not only monthly or quarterly or when they catch up with their accountant, he said.

Business skills

The course has in particular made Chooks franchisees more aware of the importance of completing a weekly bookwork of profit and loss, and has shown them how to read their balance sheet in conjunction with their profit and loss statements.

At Chooks we believe it is the perfect timing for our franchisees to increase their business skills as we face the economic downturn and higher competition as people become more conservative with their money. Hansen said franchisees were better positioned now that they had learnt to be aware of their financials daily and weekly.

The skills our franchisees have learnt through the training course has enabled them to forecast sales, discover when the sales are not high enough, taught them to look at the margins they have on different products and focus on those items with higher margins rather than those that are discounted, and make their business more cost effective and efficient.