A homegrown health food retailer with 16 stores will expand interstate next year, opening its first stores outside of NSW. Chris Mavris, GM of Soul Origin, told Inside Retail PREMIUM the business, which is 90 per cent franchised, will open 16 new stores in 2015. “Next year there will be a bigger push to regional, we’re looking at the Central Coast, Newcastle, a second store in the Wollongong area, and a couple of stores in Canberra,” Mavris said. “Towards the end of next year, or
early 2016, we will begin a push into Queensland.”
Soul Origin was established in 2011 after four years of research and trialling different concepts, including a street cafe and an inline quick service food model.
The three founding brothers, who prefer to remain nameless, decided the quick service inline version would be most easily replicated, and opened the first store at Sydney’s Hunter Connection in the CBD.
Stores operate across three formats – kiosks, inline stores, and walk in stores – with footprints ranging from 25sqm to 101sqm.
Mavris describes Soul Origin’s product offering as “healthy fast food that is a little left of centre”.
New product lines being trialed in five stores are protein balls and a healthy doughnut, which Mavris says have “less sugar, less carbs, and more fibre than an apple”.
The business is in early stage talks to rollout cold pressed juice across its store network.
