Kitchen makeover franchise, Dream Doors, is increasing its Franchise Fee from £25,000 to £29,950 from 1st January 2018. The rise will offset some of the additional costs incurred by the company since it overhauled its training programme, took on several more franchisee support staff and added extra deliverables to the franchise package this year. 

New Dream Doors franchisees now benefit from nine days of head office induction, followed by another week of supplier training. In addition, Dream Doors now supplies advanced CAD planning software within its franchise package - with a training course solely dedicated to that. Furthermore, the company has trebled its franchisee support over the last two years, giving one-on-one in-territory assistance to new starters while they learn their craft. This is especially important with a franchise such as Dream Doors, since hardly any of its 78 franchisees had any previous kitchen industry experience. In fact, most applicants haven’t run their own business before, so carefully guiding them through the complexities of launching a kitchen retail franchise is of paramount importance.

Mike Maughan-Brown, who recently launched his Dream Doors Franchise in Exeter, had this to say about the new induction programme: “The training was excellent. A great deal of material was covered in considerable depth. The experience and expertise of the trainers was impressive and their enthusiasm and commitment was infectious. The training left me much more confident in my ability to execute the business plan and follow the franchise model.”

Alex Waite, Dream Doors’ head of franchise recruitment says: “Dream Doors makes no money out of the Franchise Fee and, in fact, at £25,000 we are making a loss on recruitment. Bringing the fee in line with our increased spend merely means we cover our costs to recruit, train and launch a new franchisee. But the £29,950 fee we received is gone in the first three months so, from then onwards, we are reliant on management services fees generated as a percentage of franchisees’ sales. 

He adds: “What this demonstrates is that Dream Doors needs franchisees to succeed, to get off the mark and become profitable as fast as possible. That way both us and our franchisees see a return on investment. But, of course, what it also shows is that Dream Doors has to carefully assess any applicant. As, while this is a simple business model that anyone can understand, there are still several facets of it that newcomers need to grasp. The most important aspects are sales, margins and customer service. Get these right and you build a profitable business very quickly.”

Dream Doors is holding regular Discovery Days at its headquarters in Gosport, Hampshire. Any interested parties who would like to take advantage of the existing fee of £25,000 + VAT need to conclude their due diligence and enter into a Franchise Agreement before the end of 2017.