“Ben loves a sauna and I’m a floater, and when we tried City Cave for the first time, we absolutely loved it,” says franchisee Mel Davis.

“It tapped into our emotions. We came out of the experience and I said, ‘We have to buy one’. The next day Ben was on the phone to the City Cave founders!”

The couple’s instinct paid off. Today they are the passionate owners of not just one but three City Cave Float & Wellness centres, including the Springfield haven that delivered their first therapeutic experience of the wellness business.

Ben says, “It was very poetic to buy the centre that made us fall in love with the brand!”.

From the first meeting, the pair were impressed with the vision and collaborative nature of City Cave’s two founders, Jeremy Hassell and Tim Butters.

“There was a lot of clarity about what they wanted to achieve and how they would do it,” Ben explains. “They asked us a lot of questions too about what we thought the future would look like for the brand.”

Brisbane-based former beauty professional Mel and long-term retailer Ben were soon committed to the brand. When they couldn’t find a location nearby they extended their search and discovered a great opportunity to build a brand new centre in Cairns.

City Cave multi-site franchisees start with remote business

They decided not to relocate but to manage the new business long distance for the sake of their young family.

“Opening a remote business in a brand new franchise network while juggling a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old was a challenge!” Ben says.

It was an adventure the ambitious pair were ready to tackle, with the support of the City Cave team.

“City Cave’s support was amazing. Our business manager was able to come up and help us with the opening to make sure we had ticked all the boxes,” Mel says.

The couple spent three weeks up to and including the official launch on-site in Cairns.

Mel spends a few days every month immersed in City Cave Cairns, training and coaching the team and building a strong internal culture while developing relationships with local businesses and the community.

Ben’s retail experience has proved invaluable. “My background is with The Athlete’s Foot, so I am able to instil that focus on high customer service into our staff,” he says.

“Customer service is key in this business. We want clients to prioritise themselves and they can’t do that without an emotional element,” he points out.

Scaling up, closer to home

After just a year of running the Cairns centre remotely, Ben and Mel were pumped and ready to scale up the business. They strategically purchased two more locations – much closer to home.

Ben says, “It was a no-brainer; we knew how the demographic worked for this model and we could cross-promote with our The Athlete’s Foot store.

“We bought existing businesses, taking over high-performing centres from an amazing franchisee looking to retire.”

Ben and Mel bought the Ipswich and Springfield centres and the corridor territory between them.

“We are waiting for the area to develop, and the population to grow before we open a centre here,” explains Mel.

The pair are great ambassadors for the City Cave brand, based on four values: abundance, collaboration, empathy and balance. And their commitment to collaboration has helped them achieve their recent Diamond Award status.

Collaborative approach is a winner

“We have a very different approach to some franchise owners,” Ben says. “We are happy to show staff and other franchisees our P&Ls. And we don’t talk percentages, we talk in dollars.

“Sharing honest information is how everybody achieves. Some people in the network are very new, and we’re happy to help out and show what has worked for us,” he says. “And to admit when you don’t have an answer. That’s led us to find solutions ourselves.”

The pair praise the high level of team work within the City Cave network, which has various What’s App and Facebook groups, and chat groups for troubleshooting, POS, and marketing ideas.

“It’s really refreshing,” Ben says.

Mel says the brand culture was a winner in their eyes from the beginning.

“When we first met Jeremy and Tim, their approach to collaboration enticed us. We see it at the City Cave conferences; there are a lot of round table discussions so franchisees learn from each other,” she says. “Peer information is real and genuine.”

City Cave’s collaborative network

The collaborations are often the small tips that become the one percenters that make a difference in business – from successful sales techniques to social media posts that get plenty of traction.

At the 2024 conference, franchisees delivered three of the formal presentations.

“When you have people with expertise from previous experiences, why not tap in?” Ben says.

“One of the amazing things is that City Cave is still in its infancy,” says Ben. “The active and engaged franchisees are moulding what it will look like in 10 years.”

Ben and Mel have already taken advantage of the opportunities to scale their business. And there’s still another City Cave to launch when the time is right.

“Ben and I were provided a huge opportunity; his old boss vendor-financed us into The Athlete’s Foot,” Mel says. “We want to build our own mini-empire and help some of our staff to become active owners in City Cave. As Ben says, it’s about paying it forward.”