ranchising, with its emphasis on consistent methods and standards, tends to disguise the importance of the entrepreneur in making an outlet work. After all, you may think, the rules, protocols, recipes and methods have been worked out by the franchisor. All a franchisee has to do is to is to follow the operations manual, right?
Wrong. Look no further than the story of Haseena Osman, whose Sasol garage in Blue Downs, Cape Town, may seem like a sitting duck with the rising petrol price.
Normally, garage owners despair when South Africa's regulated petrol price shoot through the roof. They know that people start joining lift clubs and petrol sales plummet. It's even worse for garages in neighbourhoods where commuters can switch to subsidised train and bus services. Blue Downs is such an area.
But Haseena, true to her entrepreneurial nature, saw it as an opportunity. She spotted the mobile ticket office of the Golden Arrow bus service doing brisk business across the road from her garage. In a flash she was on the phone to Golden Arrow: why not send the mobile office somewhere else and she can sell bus tickets on their behalf? The deal was done, and now her garage sells about R200 000's worth of bus tickets a month.
It is this kind of entrepreneurial thinking that turned the new site which Sasol estimated would do between 100 000 and 180 000 litres a month, into one that tops 400 000 litres.
But it's also "service to the customer, you make sure your shop is always clean, never out of stock, and good management at all times", says Haseena.
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Haseena and her husband Nasroodien Gaffoor have been running the garage for three years now, she as the owner and financial manager, and he as operations manager. Both of them have extensive experience in the cash-and-carry trade, and Haseena has grown up in the retail businesses of her family.
But nothing could have prepared them for the work that goes into establishing a 24-hour garage. For months they hardly saw each other as they worked their 12-hour shifts back to back, he at night, and she throughout the day. Getting systems set up and working without hitches was their most difficult challenge, and crucial to their survival. In the cut-throat convenience and petrol trade, a system can't be down for more than a few minutes without causing serious damage. Staff reliability was a problem until they established their own transport system to fetch them and take them home after shifts.
They came through their difficult inception with a business that beat everyone's expectation. They've installed managers - family members - and have settled down to a more normal routine. Perhaps too normal, because Haseena is already looking for an opportunity to expand into the fuel distribution industry.
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