How do you run a wellness business 1700km from home? Carefully, and with the right systems behind you.

When Brisbane-based franchisees Melissa and Ben Davis bought their first City Cave in Cairns, they had never run a wellness centre. They hadn’t even maintained a backyard pool.

Now with three successfully operating, they’re happy to share what worked for them.

“We have great managers in all locations and we work on the business. City Cave has the systems in place to support us,” Melissa says.

City Cave centres offer three treatments: flotation, infrared sauna and massage. The franchisor’s systems underpin everything behind that experience, from staff training and an intranet to OH&S processes and legal documentation.

City Cave systems are a foundation for multi-site success

For a couple managing a site remotely, that infrastructure made all the difference. “When we bought our Cairns business I had no idea how to run it… so having the right structures in place was invaluable,” Melissa says.

“We train all our staff to the City Cave guidelines; everything is online so easy to access. Our customer waivers are all set up through head office. It would be so costly and difficult to do this by ourselves,” she says.

What Melissa and Ben have done is built on the foundations established by the franchisor, setting up a structure that caters specifically to their multi-site needs.

“We have morning, evening, weekly and monthly checklists based on City Cave documentation, and we add to them to make them unique to each centre,” Melissa says. 

Their tailored approach provides guidelines, standards and boundaries for each of the managers. They have established a rostering process; set rules for how managers deal with problems and when, and who, they need to contact; and made clear their expectations as franchisees.

“We outline our goals – a realistic goal and a super target to have an extra push. And we follow that through to the staff monthly budget.”

Melissa and Ben are keen to incentivise staff, and take a fun approach that keeps team culture alive with initiatives like City Cave bingo.

For this incentive, staff need to tick off on a bingo card each of the targets they reach in activities like product sales, memberships, online reviews, customer compliments. When all the boxes are ticked, they win a prize. 

“A lot of the team culture stems from understanding our values, such as empathy, and in turn giving our teams the training and the tools they need to do the job,” Melissa says.

While creating the structures for success, the pair has also adopted a policy of transparency with managers.

“We are very open with our managers on P&Ls,“ Melissa reveals. “Business owners can be scared to do this but we believe it gives our centre leaders an idea of why we make the decisions we make. They can see a bigger picture, and have a better understanding of the overall business,” she adds.

Leadership has been refined

“And we’re big on our managers having opportunities; we set them up with the knowledge to take on a franchise themselves. We had a lot of encouragement, and we want to pay that forward.”

While the systems have been long established, Melissa and Ben changed their leadership roles last year to simplify processes for staff. 

“Initially staff would come to me, then sometimes my husband and they were getting confused. Now we’ve split responsibilities so I look after two centres, and Ben looks after the other City Cave, and another business we have,” Melissa explains.

As parents of primary-aged children, the couple live and breathe time management. 

“There’s always a bit of chaos, which is business as usual! It’s always a juggling act. But we have the structures and systems to be able to prioritise what’s important,” Melissa says. “We know if we concentrate on customer service and hygiene, we’re unassailable.

“We didn’t buy the Cairns business with plans to expand but here we are with three centres! We have had great support from City Cave, I wouldn’t change it.”