From Corner Café to JSE Giant. Carié Maas

for everyone. “If you think you know better, that’s fine, but you can’t run your restaurant differently from the others; then it isn’t a franchise.” He says you teach people everything, and then, after a year, some think they know more than you do, and then it’s hard to convince them that you are right.

      Although most franchisees tried to stick to the straight and narrow, in the early days before sophisticated control systems, there were those who tried creative accounting to avoid paying the full franchise fee. Peter once discovered that a franchisee’s turnover was far less than the sum suggested by the number of rolls and patties he used. He was caught out. “I tried to set aside a Christmas present for myself, but now I see I can’t,” was the blushing man’s excuse.

      Peter says if a franchisee was in trouble, however, and not achieving the turnover he should, they would try to help.

      Industry research has also shown that an owner operator works best – the income is up to 30 per cent more than in manager-run outlets. “A manager earns a salary and isn’t interested in making money, but an owner will offer free coffee to the mother or ice-cream to the kids so that they will tell the mother they want to go back the next day,” Peter explains.

      Whatever John, Peter, Fanis, Perry and Babis were doing, something was going right. A steady stream of franchises started opening and difficult as it was, they were managing to keep most franchisees happy.

      They had a dilemma, though, says Perry. “We were too inexperienced to trust people, which made our lives a bit of a nightmare.” He says he wouldn’t let anyone touch his portfolio, and neither would Fanis. “You can’t run a business if you are too small, but we couldn’t afford to be that big yet either. If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, and all our money was invested in the growth of the business; we couldn’t pay big salaries. We were too scared to bring people in during the first three or four years.”

      So how did this small but valiant band keep things together? Was it, in the Biblical idiom, a question of brothers dwelling in unity, as good and pleasant as the dew of Hermon? Especially if you take into account that Fanis insists that “there are 11 ‘controls’” or ways of doing something for every 10 Greeks?