Great little success story from Wishbone. $10m turnover, 100 employees, 13 stores, great supermarket distribution and, most importantly, a great product. (Terrible, out of date, single page website though)
Their business model is interesting – they manufacture yummy ready to cook food, and sell it through 3 channels – supermarkets, takeaway stores (either ready to eat or microwave it yourself) and now in a sit-down restaurant. Soon they will also market directly through eCommerce and export. I particularly like their Wellington airport store.
I’d guess (hope?) they have seperated the two business lines’ P&L’s – one focusing on providing great dishes that are in demand and delivered at low cost, and the other focusing on shifting as many of those dishes at optimised margins.
The nice thing about this model is that it removes much of the production planning problem, which is painful with (semi) fresh food. If one outlet (say the restaurant) is running low on dinners then more can be (made and) delivered from the central kitchens. Similarly if there is overstock at one place then some products can be redirected to other channels and planned production scaled back.
The risk they have is the increased managment overhead of too many distribution channels, which will blow out the number of staff, overheads and capex required. They are looking for investors – but if I was them I’d initially stay lean, deliver on the relatively cheap online/phone solution, then go for exports with local (i.e. foreign) J.V. partners.
Well done to founders Andrea Gibson Scarlett and Shayne Scarlett.
Lance Wiggs 