19. Tom Potter On How To Build A Successful Food Empire
[spp-transcript]
Tom Potter
Building A Successful Food Empire
Tom Potter founded Eagle Boys Pizza. Starting his life as a baker he created and developed a franchise model for pizza delivery and opened 200 stores throughout Australia, New Zealand and Fiji over a 20 year period. In 2007 after 20 years of remarkable success, Tom sold the Eagle Boys Franchise. At that time Eagle Boys collectively employed some 4000 staff.
Tom now brings his entrepreneurial, innovative and commercial approach to strategy and has strong foundations in project management, business transformation and stakeholder engagement that has led to a Non-Executive Director and advisory career in retail, franchising and QSR (Quick Service Restaurants) with privately owned and family companies and Government owned Corporations both within Australian and the U.S. Tom was a disrupter long before disruption was mainstream. Hear Tom’s perspective on the current market and plenty more.
During my conversation with Tom he shares:
- Why the customer promise is key
- What surprised him about the burger customer
- His 4 big successes in business
- One key mistake that you can avoid
- How to be ‘a Zebra amongst horses’
- How parallel businesses ideas can be replicated
- The benefits of tracking marketing effectiveness
- How to effectively apply guerilla marketing
- The key to successful marketing
- His opinion on how to take care of existing customers; and
- Two straight-forward questions to make better decisions to select staff
Our conversation covers what you should be doing to grow your business, make better business decisions and the lessons learned from 20 years growing the Eagle Boys business. Tom shares insights into the current QSR (Quick Service Restaurant) space including the businesses to watch.
Selected links for this episode
- www.tompotterspeaker.com.au
- The Book: The Eagle Boys Pizza Story
- Tom’s examples of who to watch in the QSR space: Grill’d, Zambrero and Subway
- BDO Kendalls – Strategic Advisors
When under pressure: “Make decisions based on strategy and plan, not knee-jerk and emotional reactions” Tom Potter
“The most important sector now is post-sale marketing…For the most part, there are no real rewards for people to keep coming back” Tom Potter
“Instead of saying I need more customers. Do you spend four hours a month analysing, planning and doing your marketing? That’s where you need to start helping yourself.” Tom Potter
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