Alex and Brad talk with Remix magazine.

Alex and Brad Smith, owners of Winner Winner Pukekohe sat down with Remix magazine and chatted about the in’s and out’s of franchising, why they chose Winner Winner and the journey they took towards opening their store in February this year! Keep reading to check out their feature in the latest edition of Remix mag.

Winner Winner, be your own boss.

Starting up a business from absolute scratch can be daunting, which is why we’re calling it that 2020 is the year of the franchise - an epic way to become a business owner, with backup! What you might not have realised as you were launching into a juicy BurgerFuel burger, slurping on a Shake Out shake or getting your teeth into a piece of Winner Winner fire-roasted chicken, is that you could actually be the #boss running the joint.

To find out more about the extremely rad range of franchise ops with BurgerFuel Group, we checked in with Alex and Brad Smith, happy franchisees of the newest Winner Winner location in Pukekohe.

When did you first realise you wanted to buy a franchise? Brad: I think the spark moment was about making a lifestyle change. We wanted to get out of that rat-race. While we both worked in the city, we lived locally. There’s not a lot of marketing jobs out this way, let’s put it that way. Winner Winner created that flexibility for us. We have a young family. It wasn’t meant to be three kids, it was meant to be two [laughs]. The store was meant to open in September and we had Beau in September, so it was all about flexibility and being closer to home. I don’t think we could have actually done this if we didn’t buy a franchise. If we were doing it ourselves, we would’ve had to create the brand, establish the food, bring in the right chef, worry about the menu, the location, all the pros and cons. We never considered other options besides franchising. With the BurgerFuel Group, from the time you sign the contract you get a lot of support. Plus being part of a big group helps us keep our prices down. We get great marketing support as well.

What attracted you the most to Winner Winner? Alex: It’s a really cool brand. We liked the fact that there was chicken, and that there was also a variety of food that lots of different people could eat together, especially families. There are salads for lunch, vegan, gluten-free options - the whole works.

Did you have any training before you opened? Alex: I did 12 weeks of training at the founding Hamilton East store. It was very intense, five or six days a week and long hours, but we had a lot of support the whole time. I got to work every position, starting as a dishwasher and had like seven shifts as that and my hands were all wrinkled up. I then moved all around the kitchen. Although I don’t work in the kitchen now, I fully understand everything that my team are doing, and I can jump in if I need to. I don’t know how you’d do it otherwise, the hands-on skills that I've learnt throughout this whole experience have really prepared me for ins and outs of running a business.

What are your future goals? Brad: First and foremost, we want to make Winner Winner Pukekohe part of the community. That’s very important to us. With our kids especially, we want to be seen as supporting local. Ultimately, now that we have one store open, we potentially have our eyes on two other stores. We probably already kind of had that on our minds anyway, all going well, and we've really enjoyed the whole franchising experience so far. We're really looking forward for what's to come!

Keen to more about the Winner Winner franchise journey? You can take a look at our franchise process here and if' you’v got any lingering questions, check out our franchise FAQs for juicy nuggets of info!

Brad and Alex, store owners of Winner Winner Pukekohe.

Winner Winner table feat. Maple Carrot salad, fire-roasted rotisserie chicken, fried chicken, charred greens and The vegan burger.

Winner Winner Pukekohe dining room.