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Phat’s funky approach to taking its lunches to the workplace
The choice of lunches at the workplace widens as the Phat Pasty Co’s retro camper-style vans are being joined by new fleets with their own menus.
The Phat Pasty Co., the quirky distributor of mid-morning and lunch-time lunches to the workplace from retro-style vans reminiscent of iconic VW campers, is widening its choice with the arrival of the Phat Potato Co., Phat Salad Co., and Phat Buffet Co.
The business is proving attractive to prospective franchisees as it provides the opportunity to get into catering without having to face the high cost of renting and fitting out restaurant or take-away high-street premises.
A Phat van operation can be set up for only £22,000, including the initial franchise fee of £9,995, and expanded across all four concepts without any further initial fees.
Franchisees start the day around 6am preparing their snacks, such as bake-off, hand-crimped Cornish pasties, curries, jacket potatoes, home-made soups, sandwiches and salads, either in their kitchen at home, or in the case of multi-van operators in a lock-up kitchen, probably on a small industrial unit. Then with their vans loaded they are off on their daily rounds making between 40 and 50 stops between 8.30am and 1pm.
The beauty of the four concepts is that customers can be offered a different menu each day.
The business also has the advantage that it isn’t restricted to the working week. Franchisees can be out with their vans at weekends selling at local community and sporting events, village fairs, private parties, and the like. They have even been booked for weddings.
What sets Phat apart from others in the workplace snacks market are its unmissable, colourful vans complete with their roof-mounted surf boards - a combination that is bound to lift spirits even in the most mundane of workplaces.
The vans are made exclusively for Phat in the Midlands and there is a national servicing network in place.
The vans certainly live up to the Phat name - a slang expression in rap/hip-hop culture meaning sexy or cool - and recently helped the firm to succeed Marks & Spencer to win the 2009 Retailer of the Year award at the Lunch! Contemporary Food exhibition.
The judges praised Phat for “taking a standard snack idea and creating a high quality fun and funky offer to provide the very best of what is available in the high-street direct to customers at their place of work.”
In addition to selling regional master franchises and unit franchises, Phat in its efforts to quickly build a national brand is offering licences to operate vans to cafés, coffee shops and bakeries, and developing a Phat Cart concession for such sites as universities, sports venues, petrol stations, and office canteens and restaurants.
Phat is the idea of Laura Clark, who has spent her career in catering and was looking to start up a business she could fit around her lifestyle as a working mother. She was fortunate that her husband Paul had been in fast-food franchising for 15 years and the two developed the Phat franchise, self-financing the entire project. Continuing their funky theme, the couple have styled themselves, “The Phat controllers”.
Paul had been at the high-end of the fast-food industry as operations director of PepsiCo Restaurants (now the Yum! brand) in four countries in eastern Europe for three years in the 90s. In 1994 he opened 54 restaurants in Poland (mainly Pizza Huts with a few KFCs and Taco Bells) in a £50m development, which was the biggest investment by PepsiCo Restaurants in the world that year.
“The inspiration for the business came after a trip to see family in Cornwall,” says Laura. “The lifestyle is so much fun and full of life that we wanted to encapsulate it and take it to the public every morning. We’ve already had some amazing feed back, and having people greet our van with smiles on their faces is a great rewarding start to the day. Our mission is to take our Phat brand to every town across the country and make it a household name.”
The couple piloted their business at Bedford and now have a company-owned unit based at Milton Keynes with four vans serving 350 companies a day. It also has a thriving buffet and office lunch business, and caters for events and parties at weekends.
Recent franchise sales have included an area development franchise in the North-East which will kick-off with five Phat vans working out of Gateshead.
“Everyone who sees our funky Phat vans loves the business and our food,” says Laura. “The challenge now is to replicate it across the UK to create a Phat revolution in every town.”
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