Canadian franchise systems span industries from nail salons to childcare to fast food and employ thousands of Canadians from coast to coast. Here are three home-grown and locally owned Canadian entrepreneurial success stories.
By David Chilton Saggers
Oxford Learning Centres
In the 1980s, the rise of alternative schooling prompted Oxford Learning CEO Nick Whitehead to look at how children were taught and how they learned. He considered opening a school, but instead, he opened an Oxford Learning Centre in London, Ontario in 1984.
The centres are designed to supplement traditional education, not replace it. There are now 136 Oxford Learning franchises from British Columbia to Nova Scotia. There are also 21 in the U.S., one in Kuwait, one in Qatar, and two in the Bahamas, with more expansion in Canada and abroad coming soon.
Whitehead says he sees further growth in Canada and other opportunities in the Middle East.
All Oxford Learning Centres are franchises. “Our strength is developing curriculum and supporting franchisees,” says Whitehead. As for the franchisees themselves, Whitehead says they include former bankers, lawyers, and lots of teachers. Increasingly, too, he’s seeing younger people—and younger women in particular—who want to invest with the brand.
As for what he looks for in a franchisee, Whitehead is straightforward: “They must want more than just another day at the office.” New franchisees benefit from extensive digital training followed by two weeks of in-person learning at head office in London.
You’ll find Oxford Learning locations in new builds and renovated spaces in prime retail locations, such as strip malls. Franchisees themselves hire their teachers, and in almost all cases they are provincially certified. The franchise system has multiple target markets because of the many programs it offers, and the elementary school program is the most popular. As for the benefits of the Oxford Learning system, according to Whitehead, almost all franchisees would say that franchising with Oxford has been positive for them and their family. Or as he puts it, “Going to work every day is not going to work.”
Whitehead explains that the COVID-19 outbreak was a challenging time. Yet despite the chaos, Oxford Learning managed to enroll 85 per cent of its students in Oxford’s digital world online. Looking forward, Oxford is developing a proprietary online learning platform, which is expected to launch in 2024.
Next year, Oxford Learning celebrates its 40th anniversary. The celebrations include an annual meeting in Florida, a trip to a Mexican resort for franchisees and their families, and system discounts for new franchisees.
Prairie Donair
A love of food and an enterprising spirit are two constants in Joshua Bagchi’s career. And those traits helped him on his journey to becoming the CEO of Prairie Donair, the largest chain of donair shops in the country.
Bagchi was working as a food sales representative in 2010 when he took the plunge and acquired an underperforming donair restaurant in Regina, Saskatchewan. That meant, Bagchi explains from head office in Regina, that he was working at two jobs—as a sales rep and as a donair cook.
By 2015 he’d paid off the debt from buying the now successful restaurant and opened a second location, also in Regina, that took two years to turn a profit. When he opened a third Prairie Donair in that city, it made money in less than six months and Bagchi hasn’t looked back since.
He started expanding to other cities in 2019 and sold a store in Regina and another one in Swift Current, about a two-and-a-half-hour drive east of the provincial capital. Now there are 40 Prairie Donair locations, with most in the three Prairie provinces, plus one in White Rock, British Columbia, and another in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. Bagchi maintains one corporate store in Regina. He says he’s looking for developers to help him expand in Ontario, the most populous province in Canada.
A new turnkey Prairie Donair location will cost between $250,000 and $270,000. The sweet spot for his stores is about 800 to 1,000 square feet because “we don’t want to get too big,” says Bagchi. Franchises are usually in strip malls that have an anchor client, and he has his eye on a drive-thru operation. The majority of his customers, some 80 per cent of them, are millennials, Bagchi explains. However, he is mindful of the older market segment and how much they like donairs, which became popular in Halifax in the 1970s. The donair is shaved beef, onions, tomatoes, and spices served in a pita. It has its origins as a street food, which was adapted when it came to Canada’s east coast.
As for the qualities Bagchi looks for in potential franchisees, he says he wants a strong work ethic, and an understanding of the food business and its financial aspects. They must also really care about the market segment they’re in, Bagchi adds. Prairie Donair brings its new franchisees to Winnipeg for their training, which lasts from four to six weeks. “It’s [in the] classroom and on the floor,” he says. “It’s on the floor where we want people to learn.”
Investing with Prairie Donair brings numerous benefits, says Bagchi. There’s the product itself, a growth-focused head office with national ambitions, strong support, and a very good personal benefits plan for franchisees, including a pension scheme.
Bagchi is candid about the first effects of the pandemic: “When COVID hit, my sales tanked.” However, being the entrepreneur that he is, he got to work building an online ordering system that took off immediately. In addition, he fielded many requests about acquiring a franchise and in 2020, he opened 17 new Prairie Donair locations.
The Fritter Shop
Kelvin Van Rijn says he grew up in his parents’ bakery in Amsterdam. Now the founder and president of The Fritter Shop, headquartered in London, Ontario, Van Rijn is cashing in on his upbringing as he looks to expand his franchise system.
Van Rijn’s parents came to Canada in 2001 but had no immediate interest in starting a bakery. Eventually they found their way back to baking and started The Dutch Bakery in St. Thomas, Ontario in 2002.
With this modest start and a single batch of apple fritters (usually only baked in the Netherlands to celebrate New Year), they initiated The Fritter Shop concept. The apple fritters caught customers’ attention and they began asking for them year-round. The Dutch Bakery became Kelvin’s Fritter Shop in 2016 and now operates under the name The Fritter Shop.
“We’re a specialty Dutch dessert shop,” says Van Rijn, who describes how the brand uses its own homemade Dutch dough and custard to make its pastries in multiple flavours—not just apple.
The Fritter Shop in St. Thomas is still going strong, and Van Rijn has started to expand with his first franchised location this year, in a Pusateri’s supermarket in the North York neighbourhood in Toronto. There are also two other stores, which Van Rijn calls “licensee locations,” in north London and Strathroy, Ontario. The Fritter Shop also sells its desserts at a local market in London. As for expansion, Van Rijn explains he’s not concentrating on brick-and-mortar locations at the moment. “With our franchising, we’re focusing on our food trucks.” And the system’s growth, he continues, will be in the Greater Toronto Area, where he hopes to add 10 more locations by 2025.
The cost of a franchise runs from $175,000 to $200,000, which includes a wrapped truck. Training in London takes five to seven days. Van Rijn is looking for energetic investors who don’t mind working weekends and can weather the decline in business during the wintry months from January to March. Van Rijn says prospective franchisees should also have strong interpersonal leadership skills. Previous business experience is also an asset. His target customers are mostly younger families and market shoppers looking to try something different.
As for the benefits of investing with The Fritter Shop, Van Rijn mentions the low cost of entry and his unique offering. “Nobody’s making the product we’re making,” he says. And he’s soon going to be making a lot more of it. Come September, a new automated production facility in London will begin making 1,000 fritters an hour.
The COVID-19 lockdowns were tough, Van Rijn admits, because his business was based on selling where people gather.
However, it also prompted The Fritter Shop to try new things, including making deliveries. He and his staff made sometimes as many as 70 a day, and they keep up this volume to this day.