Homefresh founder Stephen Curtis shares the brand’s story so far.

“Homefresh is about changing the eating habits of our great nation. Our goal was to build a community interested in healthy cooking and eating around each physical location,” Stephen says.

“We started with the kids’ cooking classes, added families and adults and then NDIS-funded community flocked in. We soon realised this was a largely untapped area and quickly discovered that the brand had the power to reach much further into to the broader community.

“Now we conduct cooking classes in many out-of-store venues as well. We operate in schools, other councils, outer shopping centres, libraries; all rent-free and very lucrative business activities.  

“The cooked fresh daily ready meals, without preservatives or fillers, we introduced next took off from day one. Customers followed their noises to the store, could see us cooking and tubbing up the meals in front of them and quickly told their friends and families.

“It was not long before our cooked fresh daily healthy meals were being requested as catering solutions for councils, schools, and functions.

“Now our immediate goal is to replicate this highly profitable business in each mainland state,” Stephen reveals. 

Eight questions for Homefresh founder Stephen Curtis

Why did you start this business?

“Having held a senior position in a leading national company marketing to kids, the thought of 25 four-year-old kids walking through a local shopping centre dressed in Homefresh branded chefs’ outfits just screamed at me as a marketer’s dream. Being in retail, sales and marketing all my life this just felt right.”

What experience did you have?

“I ran a sales and marketing team in an $80 million business, and have owned and operated three leading franchised stores. However, I had never built a brand from scratch until now,” Stephen reveals. “All I can say is most of the hard work is done, so now my new franchisees can hit the ground running.”

What were the biggest challenges you faced?

“While shopping centres loved the concept, they did not want to be first to support Homefresh,” Stephen explains. The risks of kids in a kitchen environment outweighed the opportunities for centre landlords, he says. 

“Now the shopping centres see Homefresh as the purest form of retail theatre and they phone me daily and I just need the franchisees to start investigating if this is right for them.”

What expectations did you have for the business when you started out?

“From the very first time I cooked with a four-year-old, I knew Homefresh had to become a national franchise. I knew we could help so many people and advance our mission if we could advance our footprint.”

What is the brand mission?

“Our mission is to change the eating habits of our great nation and we are about to accelerate this. We are about to launch an on-line program (which will form part of each physical store) with the potential to put a Homefresh chef in every kitchen in Australia,” Stephen explains.

The best way to achieve this mission is to keep building the rapidly expanding community in-store and on-line, he adds. 

Who is the core customer?

This is where Homefresh real strength lies, says Stephen. 

A cooking experience customer can be someone who loves to cook, four to 14 year-olds, young adults who need to learn, adults who love the companionship of cooking with others, or the NDIS community who need to learn to shop and cook.

“Our ready meal customers can be working adults who don’t have time to cook using our meals for lunches or dinners. Or a senior, who doesn’t want to, or can no longer, cook. These customers love the convenience, price and freshness. These days our target market is almost everyone!” Stephen says.

Who are your competitors?

“We’re in a great space because there is no other branded shopping and cooking school like Homefresh. We compete with everyone with our ready meals. But our point of difference is cooking fresh daily without preservatives and fillers,” Stephen points out. “This makes the meals easy to sell.”

What’s the potential for your business? 

With an ageing population, and the NDIS community more than 500,000 strong, there’s plenty of potential just among these consumer profiles. “We only service 60 NDIS participants in each store, each week, so there is plenty of room for more stores,” he says.

When it comes to expanding the brand, he sees a store in most sub-regional (medium to big) shopping centres, in each state. The mobile business has massive upside, and there are online subscription opportunities coming soon too, Stephen says.

He predicts great things for the brand.

“Homefresh will be in top fastest growing franchises in the country in the next three years,” he believes.