the map village street editors

After blowing out to 120kg while working in New York, James Miller returned to Australia inspired by one of the few healthy lunch options he could find in the Big Apple – a salad deli tacked on to the local sandwich shop attracting queues even in winter. Of a range of business ideas James discussed with friend Luke Baylis, who’d developed similarly poor eating habits in the US, this was the one that just seemed to stick. Now, amidst the bright-lights marketing jungle of fast-food chains peddling free toys with meals and pulling nutritionally irresponsible four-meat-patty stunts, the lads’ homegrown concept salad store is an optimistic beacon of health, serving up satiating meals that befit their SumoSalad title.

Since the first SumoSalad store opened in Sydney at the start of 2003, serving just three customers on the first day, the brand’s lustre has grown in intensity to 70 stores and an annual turnover of $30 million (and growing). At regular intervals, James and Luke grace the pages of BRW, Virgin Blue’s Voyeur magazine and franchising publications, sometimes accompanied by a sumo mascot, sometimes profiled alongside other young guns, but always looking fit, energetic and as if they are having a lot of fun.
The two Sydneysiders first met as employees of a telecommunications company that sent them both to work in the US. “When we moved over to the States – Luke was living in Chicago and I was living in New York – we blew out to 120 kilos a piece. We were both porkers – we just seemed to be lapping up the American food, which was absolutely awful.”
The silver lining of James’ weight gain, however, was that it helped him identify a gap in the Australian market for the health-conscious whose only option at the time was to spend $20 on a salad in a restaurant. He and Luke poured their savings into the venture, brought onboard an initial investor (businessman Steve Pongrass) and thought they’d be doing well to own five stores in the city. It was a goal they achieved by the end of only their second year. The public, particularly the metropolitan female demographic, responded enthusiastically to the store’s ‘Design Your Own Salad’ concept, as well as its menu of generous salads, cold and warm, such as Spicy BBQ Prawn and Crispy Chicken Noodle, in addition to wraps, toasties and soups.
Speaking of their decision to adopt a franchising business model with a few stores under their belt, James indicates it was the best approach for consolidating their market presence. “What we were finding was that in other states and even in the Sydney CBD, there were stores popping up which were ‘me too’ – they were exactly the same concept, a slightly different colour; even their little icon looked like ours! It was a little disheartening, to be honest, to see people be able to just blatantly copy our idea and put it forward as their own,” says James. Franchising enabled a rate of growth necessary to ensure the ‘eat large, stay thin’ brand became number one in the niche market.
Today, the SumoSalad brand is a healthy, cheeky five-year-old, raised on fun and often tongue-in-cheek marketing strategies (from advertising campaigns that parody McDonald’s ads, to an ambush marketing stunt that made the nightly news when they ‘picketed’ the opening of a doughnut store in a Melbourne shopping centre, waving placards that were urging customers to buy healthier SumoSalads instead).
Another reason the 2007 GQ Entrepreneurs of the Year have been so successful is that, for the first year of operation and beyond, they listened to their customers about what they wanted and what nutritional info they needed with the products. Then, particularly as the business moved into regional areas, the directors sought the input of consultants, such as Olympic chef Peter Wright prior to his commitment to the Beijing Olympics. “We’ve been able to speak to consultants to tweak what we created and add that extra flavour profile to make it have more mass appeal,” James explains, which has included developing more ‘robust’ menu items in order to satisfy the male demographic as well.
Being one of the fastest-growing retail chains in the country has not come without major challenges, though, not least the learning curve that accompanied the decision to franchise. “As you go
into franchising, you’re taking on different business partners, different personalities – and you’ve got to manage that,” says James, who was his own boss as young as 19, when he owned a couple of bars in Canberra. “You’re in business with a lot of people with high expectations of what you deliver them and you end up working twice as hard to please everybody else.” Not only did the whole way they perceived the business change, they also had to master a myriad of operational, training, accounting and legal systems.
Once again, they listened astutely – this time to Steve Pongrass, who guided the duo through a lot of pitfalls, and others in the know. “We weren’t shy of calling people and we discussed our concept with people in the franchising game who could offer us advice,” says James.“The information they gave us saved us a lot of dollars along the way, making sure we didn’t make the same mistakes they had.”
With more than 60 outlets in Australia (10 of which remain company-owned) and several more in Dubai, London and soon New Zealand, James hints that SumoSalad’s offshore potential is considerable. “Australian concepts are highly sought-after, especially in Dubai, the UK and the US,” observes James. “We get interest from all around the world … With Dubai, we put our big toe in the water, so to speak, to see how we could manage a master franchise in a different country.”
For now, however, the focus is squarely on the domestic market, to build the business in Australia to 200 outlets. “The motivation has been different all along the way. Once it was to start a business, but the next point was to make it into a franchise, then to make it into a successful franchise that gives good returns to franchisees. Now the drive is the growth.”
The energetic twosome has recently dabbled in a restaurant-style take on SumoSalad, with the introduction of what James calls a “more professional offering”, originally designed for the new
T1 International terminal in Sydney but first off the mark at Doncaster in Victoria. The SumoSalad Black Label concept store is the kind of reinvention that keeps James and Luke motivated. “That’s kind of the buzz for us – doing something new and putting it out there and seeing positive results. That’s the benchmark moving forward. The Black Label can’t be rolled out everywhere but it gives us new areas we can get our brand into.”
Now a health-conscious, routine exerciser who puts in long hours (initially 18-hour, six-day weeks), but hours to suit his lifestyle, James takes a moment to reflect on whether he considers himself successful. “When Luke and I talk, I don’t think we ever think of ourselves as successful. We’re proud of what we’ve created, but I guess in our mind the job is never done. Until the day we’ve gone as far as we can go in nurturing this business and turning it into whatever it can become, at that point, I think there’ll really be a sense of accomplishment, but until that day, it’s hard to gauge.”

Interview by Sally Brown