TESTIMONIALS From Flying Instructor to Mentor Franchisee

Before joining Bakers Delight, Gregg Hardie was a flying instructor; he saw this more as a passion rather than a career.  He knew that being a flying instructor did not provide full time employment and that he needed to look for alternative career options that could allow him to keep flying in his spare time. He stumbled on Bakers Delight after his mum saw an ad in the local paper offering a Traineeship in Small Business Franchising that would lead Gregg on to becoming a Franchisee.

Gregg, who is based in South Australia, has owned Bakers Delight Unley and Bakers Delight Marion as both a single-site and multi-site operator. He was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to grow and develop with Bakers Delight throughout the last 14 years, and attributes a big part of being a successful Franchisee to having a great team behind you. This has led him to focus on the learning and development of his own employees.

Over the years, Gregg has built up his team and gone on to provide them with opportunities from management role to owning their own bakeries. Recently Gregg has been training two new Franchisees, one of which is his star employee Rachel. Rachel who undertook the Bakers Delight internal training program called “Manage To Own” which was very similar to the traineeship Gregg completed many years ago.

“Although Rachel undertaking the MTO program means I am possibly going to lose her, I knew her next step was going to be becoming her own boss. She has worked with me for over 10 years and her pre-existing knowledge of the bakery has meant she has been a dream to train. She is moving to a brand new bakery in Newton feeling very supported, not only from our training but also from BDH support staff assistance,” said Gregg

The other trainee Gregg recently trained was Vijay, a candidate who was external to Bakers Delight with a background in hospitality and Information Technology, who recently become the Franchisee of Port Pirie. Gregg’s commitment to developing people both internally and externally gives him a great sense of pride and accomplishment, and in doing this, Gregg is able to help strengthen the network while providing him with a potential succession plan for his future.

Gregg has found that there is quite a difference
in training external candidates compared to those
with Bakers Delight experience, so his approach
to training had to be different.

“It can initially be difficult for external candidates to adjust to managing both working in the bakery and completing the learning modules, they also often have other commitments outside of Bakers Delight that can take up a lot of their time and energy. I like to expose external trainees to as much as possible in the first three weeks so they realise they really need to invest all their energy into the training if they want to become a successful Franchisee.”

“The more people you train and upskill, the more people care about your business and treat it as their own. Even when training new Franchisees who are going into their own bakery, you are still creating connections and valuable relationships within the network that are forever lasting”.

The next step in the process for me is to support and mentor both Rachel and Vijay as they take on the challenge of running their own bakeries.

 – Vijay, Gregg & Rachel – 2021

Click here to learn more about the Manage To Own Program