How a True-Blue Singapore Steak house ensures a well-trained team both internally and as they grow their franchise system.
iSTEAKS Diner started its operations in 2010 in Serangoon Gardens and has since grown to 5 units across Singapore. The brand embraces the vision and intent
of the founder Ivan Hoong to making Steakhouse quality food more affordable. Steaks of various cuts and qualities are in their regular menu. They source
their meat from some of the finest butcheries in town!
iSTEAKS is more than a steak house, it is an institution comprised of experts from butcher, grill master, saucier, Fry Master and floor manager all put
together to make possible the quality cut at value for money pricing. It takes great effort and to sustain these quality value propositions.
The Challenge
In 2019, potential franchise partners approached Ivan to bring iSTEAKS to Vietnam. More concerned about the potential franchisee’s success than any other factor, the management of iSTEAKS set about developing a franchise system with Astreem Consulting, a consulting firm specializing in Franchise growth.
What iSTEAKS wanted to focus on was not the upfront capital returns they could earn from franchisees but rather, they sought to ensure their franchise system could be successfully replicated by their franchisees. The challenge was to offer them a platform to ensure scalability as they grow their brand.
Leveraging TreeAMS as the training platform for their corporate outlets and franchisees.
For iSTEAKS, they believe the key to success is the unrelenting focus on a robust training program. To solve this issue, they implement their over 150 training programs on TreeAMS, executing assessments where relevant.
TreeAMS then helps them collate the reports by individuals, outlets, territories. Wherever required, the system can also drill down by actual training to find out more detailed reports about how the learners are performing, either against themselves or compared across the franchise network.
Over the last 3 years, iSTEAKS Diner have invested heavily in the documentation of their franchise operations as well as their training program. The SOP module helps them to track changes, send the relevant SOP versions to the right people and also tracks usage volume of everyone in the system.
As for as quality operations is concerned, iSTEAKS Diner does not ever stop training. They believe that a well-trained team maintains quality. This means employees need to keep up to date with any new developments and updates. Their training programs cover many key areas including product training guides, Equipment usage training guides etc. Each of these sections have individual training modules that offer guidance on the detailed management of each of these sections.
Altogether, iSTEAKS has collated over 120 training videos and relevant assessments. Hosted on the cloud, TreeAMS facilitates iSTEAKS’ training programme employees can gain access to their training modules from anywhere and at anytime. This takes away a lot of face-to-face training time and allows employees flexibility to take in the training sessions at convenient times.
Having a franchise management system like this also helps iSTEAKS ensure consistent training is being implemented across individuals, across different outlets and potentially across different countries.
Together with iSTEAKS, we hope to ensure consistent onboarding programs, training and easily updated SOPs for both the franchisor and the franchisee. New franchisees are assigned onboarding processes that start from the moment their Franchise agreement is signed, giving guidance on location criteria, adapting the local Financials, planning outlet set up all the way to their new franchisee store’s opening.
This takes away any ambiguity for the onboarding of new franchisees. With systematic onboarding processes in place, new iSTEAKS franchisees are off to a great start in their entrepreneurial journey.
