When he heard a rival healthy food chain was coming to Ireland, Freshly Chopped founder Brian Lee had to wrestle with his options. Luckily, as someone who competes internationally in the martial art of jiu-jitsu, grappling comes easy to him.
“We had two Chopped stores when we heard a big player from North America was going to enter the market,” he says. “We had been first to market here in 2012, and had opened and educated the market about fresh, healthy fast food.”
As such, he was never going to tap out. But to compete he needed to scale his business fast.
“My two options were that I could take on investment to grow and dilute down my shareholding, or I could franchise,” Lee says.