Vietnamese food franchise on track to open 100 stores

Michael Bailey
December 18, 2013
The Age
The co-founder of Vietnamese food franchise Rolld., Bao Hoang, has a lot to thanks his mum for – she sewed all day for years to support her resettled refugee family, and now her recipes for rice paper rolls and pho are the basis of his ambitious national expansion plans.
Once a frustrated physiotherapist franchisee, Hoang and his two co-founders – cousin Tin Ly and former investment banker Ray Esquieries – bankrolled their first Rolld. store in Melbourne’s Goldsborough Lane last year.
Pitched as an alternative to sushi for the corporate lunch-in-a-hurry crowd, the trio were originally only going to sell rice paper rolls, but at the insistence of their original landlord, added vermicelli salad, Vietnamese baguettes and ‘Mama’ Hoang’s pho to the menu.
The food appears to have struck a chord. Hoang claims he was soon regularly doing 800 “covers” in the store’s 11am to 3pm opening time, with an average spend of $10 per customer.
The profits from that first store began to fund an expansion which today sees 13 Rolld. Stores in Melbourne and one each in Brisbane and Canberra. There are 12 stores planned for Sydney in 2014, and Hoang has just hired a NSW state manager in Quintin Mansell, a former leasing executive for institutional property managers like Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC).
It was as leasing manager for QIC’s Eastland Shopping Centre in outer Melbourne that Mansell dealt with Rolld. The predominantly Caucasian area makes it the most “challenging” Rolld. store, and therefore one of the 20 to 30 per cent of the total that Hoang has vowed to keep company-owned.
“We want to prove our concept can span demographics. Keeping some stores company-owned also reassures our franchisees that we’ve got confidence in our own business model,” Hoang says.
They’ll need confidence, given that new franchises are priced anywhere between $280,000 and $400,000, depending on the size of the store, with $330,000 the average.
With 60 stores the target for end-2014, and 100 the year after, the founders have this year brought on a “silent partner” with a significant minority stake to help further fund growth.
Hoang claims there were buyout offers from private equity firms and large franchisor groups, but that the founders want to retain control for now.
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