Roger Gillespie

In 1972, Roger Gillespie established one of Melbourne's first retail bakeries, and in 1980 together with his wife, started Bakers Delight. "We had an unusual start; we did not take the classic MBA route or anything like that. The evolution of the business is worth knowing because it still informs a lot of what we do in terms of trying to retain good staff and getting involved in corporate philanthropy."

"Franchising is a different business; if you look at it theoretically it is a new alignment of capital and labour. We never wanted to be bosses sitting on top of some capitalist enterprise; we see franchising as a pretty good way to align the interests of many different people," Gillespie says.

The Bakers Delight training, advertising and branding programs and franchise system are innovative and world class. The franchisees have been very successful in their local markets, and Bakers Delight has been awarded the FCA Franchise System twice. Gillespie says recruitment and training have been central to the company's success. Baker's Delight was one of the first franchises to qualify as an accredited retail training organisation and it has strong links with TAFE colleges in Melbourne and Sydney.

Today, Bakers Delight is the world's most successful bakery franchise with over 700 bakeries and global sales of $521 million across Australia, New Zealand and Canada, serving 2.5 million customers each week and employing more than 15,000 people. In Australia, Bakers Delight holds a healthy 14.6 per cent of the bread market. Bakers Delight is recognised as the leading corporate citizen in the country and has been a major corporate partner of the Breast Cancer Network, raising $1.4million to date and donating over $53 million in bread products to various organisations within the community.

Gillespie believes corporate sponsorship as a key part of the business, and they link their marketing efforts with philanthropy. In 2004, the group gave an estimated $25 million worth of bread to charity.  Roger Gillespie says: "Our franchisees pay about 2% of their revenue to the company for group marketing costs. This goes towards television advertising and other costs of that order. On top of that we try to encourage individual franchises to make extra philanthropic efforts on their own. It might be something like getting involved with the Breast Cancer Network fundraising or it might be a simple effort like sponsoring the "best and fairest" with the local footy team. I believe it all adds up to make a better company."

Bakers Delight remains an industry benchmark for franchise systems in Australia.