JSE-listed franchisor Famous Brands is launching the 128-year-old global bakery-café brand, PAUL, to the local market on March 2, with the opening of its flagship PAUL restaurant, in Melrose Arch, in Johannesburg.
There are only three other PAUL stores on the continent in Morocco, Côte d'Ivoire and Reunion Island.
Famous Brands signed an exclusive licence agreement in 2015, after two years of negotiations with the French family-owned company, to become its South African licensed partner for a ten-year period.
Famous Brands CEO Darren Hele said the opening of the 180-seater restaurant would be the culmination of 15 months of close partnership. “Importing a global brand of this stature has been an excellent learning curve, bringing with it best practice benchmarks that will benefit our business in a number of key areas,” he said.
Over 80 jobs have been created in this process, across a range of positions including bakers and chefs, pastry chefs, kitchen assistants, baristas and waiters. Four additional positions have been created at head office level, including head of pastry and head chef.
“We are delighted that skills transfer comprises a significant component of the new jobs created. At senior level, the candidates underwent intensive eight-week training at PAUL’s state of the art facilities in Lille, France, as well as on site in a number of the brand’s training restaurants in France and the UK.
“These learnings have been brought back to the South African operation and transferred to the local PAUL team. Given the brand’s heritage, it was critical that our local team received the best training possible across the operation to deliver on customers’ expectations of an acclaimed global brand,” said Hele.
While PAUL supplies a range of licensed products for use in its restaurants, Famous Brands also has the opportunity to supply other approved specified items locally, through its integrated supply chain.
The Melrose Arch restaurant is a combination of bakery-patisserie-café, with a full table service restaurant and signature display counter for ‘grab-and-go’ orders. Skilled artisan bakers will craft breads and pastries within customer view in the bespoke bakery and patisserie.
Famous Brands is contracted to open five company-owned PAUL outlets over a five-year period. The initial roll-out programme will be focused on Gauteng, given that the Melrose Arch bakery and patisserie facilities are designed to service other PAUL outlets up to three times daily.