Case Study - Michael and Karen Louw
A LOVE of cricket brought Michael Louw into franchising.
Michael Louw and wife Karen had only been married for two days when they arrived in the small town of Huntly, near Aberdeen. They had travelled from South Africa for Michael to play cricket for the local team which was allowed to have two foreign players.
As an amateur Michael had to work during the week and he landed a job with an ice cream company – which eventually bought the Wiltshire Farm Foods franchise for the far north of Scotland.
Michael and Karen loved the area so much that they stayed and now Michael runs the Wiltshire Farm Foods franchise, which stretches across thousands of miles from John O’ Groats in the North to the Isle of Skye.
Michael, 34, and franchisee owner Philip Morrison, set up their Wiltshire Farm Foods franchise based in Huntly in October 2004. Back then they had just enough customers for six delivery rounds. Drivers clocked up over 60,000 miles a year delivering frozen ready-made meals to customers in some of the most remote places in the United Kingdom. One customer lived in a remote cottage that was a 40-mile round trip back from the MAIN road.
Today, the business has enough customers to keep two vans on the road every day of the week. Michael takes orders over the phone from his customers, many of whom have come to rely on their service.
Michael comments: “Our customers buy a lot of soup, they also enjoy roasts and we have a haggis dish, which proves very popular.”
Much of the business comes from recommendations from both customers’ and medical personnel, as their patients often require this type of service once they’ve returned home.
Michael remembers: “When one of our drivers was off I was delivering to a home in Inverness. The lady who came to the door had just come out of hospital.
“Her face was grey and she was almost doubled up, and wracked with arthritis. I thought she looked extremely ill. I visited the house again nearly a year later and I didn’t recognise her. She stood upright and the colour had come back to her cheeks.
“Her son said we had been responsible for her remarkable recovery. Before she’d gone into hospital she hadn’t been eating properly. But thanks to our meals, she was now eating a balanced meal every day and her health had returned.
“We are running a business, it’s a very good model and we get lots of help from head office in Trowbridge whenever we need it.
“But it is also a business that gives you great satisfaction.”
Though he works long hours building the business, Michael still finds time to captain a local cricket team and he and Karen have fallen in love with the North of Scotland. The couple now have two daughters.
