Franchising a sweet addition to slushie mix

Marcella Bidinost
May 24, 2012
The Age

Four to 12-year-olds are Slush Puppie’s biggest consumers.

Long-established brand Slush Puppie discovers it pays to be diligent before mixing it up in the franchising market.

Shortly after iconic ice drink makers Slush Puppie announced plans to sell 90 franchises across Australia, a prompt reality check swayed management to put its grand plans for fast expansion on ice.

Who knew Slush Puppies still exist? They do. In fact, around 2500 Slush Puppie machines still churn out the flavoured ice drink in independent supermarkets, corner stores, schools, resorts and hotels across the country.

Flashbacks to the ‘70s and ‘80s might recall the slushie’s beginnings in Australia: convenience store Food Plus had the ‘Freezie’ (which now sells at BP), 7-Eleven the ‘Slurpee’ (still a whopping brand today), and almost every other ice machine the ‘ICEE’ or the ‘Slush Puppie’, recognised by its mascot dog dressed in blue.

While the Slurpee made it to Australia in 1975, the ‘Slush Puppie’ arrived in 1978 thanks to Murray Stafford, a former insurance salesman who became the Australian licensee of the US brand, and still is today.

Slush Puppie is headquartered at a company-owned building in Nerang on the Gold Coast, which is also home to Stafford’s group of companies, including a multimillion dollar portfolio of commercial, retail and industrial properties leased to many blue-chip tenants.

While commercial property is Stafford’s prime love, Slush Puppie is among a slew of his business ventures.

In 2010, after 32 years of selling ice to, well, Australians, Stafford announced plans to offer 90 franchises across Australia, stating it was one of the last existing non-franchised businesses of its kind with established territories.

But a prompt reality check swayed management to put its grand plans for fast expansion on ice.

Rather than go gangbusters across the regions, Slush Puppie greenlit three franchisees in a contained area: two on the Gold Coast and one in northern New South Wales.

“Rarely does a long established and proven household brand decide to go down the franchising path,” says general manager Glenn Isaac.

“Ours is a strong and stable brand with brilliant tools and systems in place, but franchising was new to us and we wanted to make sure it would work.”

The company was reassured.

“Our first three franchisees have been great and proven that it’s possible,” Isaac says. “Their businesses have been very profitable and now, instead of 90 franchise regions, we’ve decided to offer 50 for sale, focusing on Queensland and working our way down the eastern seaboard.”

“Queensland is a strong market for slushies and, being our own backyard, we realised we can manage it a lot easier.”

As a hotter state, honing in on iced drink franchising in Queensland also makes sense, though Slush Puppies (plus countless other ice drinks) also sell in far chillier places such as Canada* and the UK. Isaac says there are also 1000 Slush Puppie machines in New South Wales and 1000 more in Victoria.

Buying a Slush Puppie franchise outright costs $100,000- $200,000 and requires no ongoing freezer rental costs or royalty fees. Franchisees simply own and service the plug-in freezers (no water lines needed) in their territory, sell Slush Puppie’s concentrated product to vendors and work at clinching new sales venues.

The concentrate, made from 25% fruit juice, is made at the company’s Gold Coast manufacturing plant, one of only six licensed production facilities in Slush Puppie’s worldwide network of 40 countries. Franchisees receive business and sales training, a territory expansion plan, field assistance and the option to buy more freezers.

Four to 12-year-olds are Slush Puppie’s biggest consumers, realised largely by the brand’s venture into school canteens via its 99% fruit juice variation, which has a tick from the Healthy Kids Association and the Federation of Canteens in Schools. Unlike Slurpee, Slush Puppie is a non-carbonated drink.

For store owners and schools, the business also runs a free profit-share program, which removes the need to buy equipment.
So how do you keep an old brand new? Isaac says Slush Puppie has been lucky: its success still rides on the awareness of the drink’s name and its mascot dog.

“We haven’t made a lot of changes to the brand over the years. A few years ago we updated the design of the dog to make him more funky and, in terms of promotions, we mainly drive them instore with competitions and merchandise.”

It’s a far humbler approach than the giant Slurpee marketing machine, which these days has mobile phone apps for flavour and store finders, uses QR (quick response) codes, hands out free drinks on its annual Happy 7-Eleven Day and has over 258,000 likes on its Facebook page. Slush Puppie, meanwhile, page has a modest 200 likes.

*Since 1999, Winnipeg has been crowned the Slurpee Capital of the World with more than 188,833 Slurpees sold there every month.

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