This blog is slightly different from the other articles, I am not introducing you to a cafe or a roaster but to a cafe business model setup by Fibonacci Coffee.
What is the idea behind the name?
Fibonacci refers to an Italian mathematician in the 12th century, considered by some people as the most talented western mathematician during the Middle Ages. The two things that Fibonacci has left us are modus Indorum aka Arabic numerals and the Fibonacci sequence.
Fibonacci sequence is a maths theory that Fibonacci has applied in the solving of the problem - growth of a population of rabbits based on idealized assumption. In the Fibonacci sequence of numbers, each number is the sum of the previous two numbers. So what Fibonacci Coffee is trying to portray here is
- Trying to be simple
- Seeing the franchise business as a natural re-occurring like the Fibonacci sequence in the growth of the rabbit population
- Also to reflect coffee's Italian origin
How did the business idea came along?
4 founders to the business (3 brothers and friend) meet up in 1999, developing from coffee cart to cafe. The background of the 4 founders are into system building and franchising. When they build this franchise business, they decide to take it down a different path. Having researched into different franchising business model, they see the traditional franchise model way of working as a losing game for the franchisee.
When Fibonacci Coffee decided to franchise their business, they took on a no franchise fee approach and not only that, they will provide group support to their franchisee in ways such as personal training. The core values of Fibonacci Coffee is to be family oriented business and a high moral business model. They strongly believe in treating their franchise like their family members
So how does the model work?
This is one of the ways Fibonacci Coffee franchise work. Firstly, the core team will locate a venue and setup the cafe themselves, proving that the cafe does have a healthy revenue before franchising the cafe to an interested party. For new starters to the cafe industry, they can choose to franchise with Fibonacci Coffee and Fibonacci team will provide onsite support for the new franchisee in running the cafe if the franchisee require their support.
This model then ensure that the cafes that they do put on the market for franchise are actually revenue generating cafes and if you are looking at taking over a cafe in another location and want to franchise with Fibonacci Coffee, they may also provide advice as to the viability of the cafe for that location. Because they do not want anyone to get into a situation when at the end of the day, they might lose all their retirement funds after taking over the cafe.
With the growth in the number of franchisees, Fibonacci Coffee is now able to provide their franchisees with the group buying power by reducing the cost of the supplies.
The main activities that Fibonacci Coffee is working on now is the promotion of their coffee carts hire for corporation and events and Research & Development in locating more locations to setup cafes with the hope of moving the brand forward through the opening of more outlets.
Finally, there is one thing to note, Fibonacci team places high value in having a work life balance. Hence you would find that a majority of their locations are located in office tower (which is also part of the problem for me in getting to those cafes, the cafes are outside my working area and hence I can't get to those cafes during a work day for photos) that only operates from Monday to Friday. They believe that weekend is time to spend with their families.
Their proudest story is their first cafe located in Raymond Terrace that saw them successfully implementing their franchise model when a staff took over the cafe to become the owner of the cafe.
Picture below is a photo representation of their Happy Blend.
Okay readers, I got a couple of people to ring up for the next blog, hopefully it won't be too long before my next blog.
