Australian fast-casual chain Soul Origin has set out a plan to more than double its network to roughly 400 locations globally within 10 years, expanding well beyond the shopping-centre food courts that built it. The company, which marks its 15th anniversary this year, currently operates 178 locations serving around 22 million customer visits annually, and intends to add 15 to 20 stores a year across Australia, New Zealand and further international markets.
The defining feature of the plan is where the new stores will sit. Alongside continued shopping-centre growth, Soul Origin is targeting regional sites, drive-throughs, airports, hospitals, universities and service centres. Six new stores are scheduled to open before Christmas, including a company-owned flagship at Sydney International Airport.
Highway retailing is central to the push. The brand already runs a hybrid service-centre format in partnership with fuel retailer Ampol, with two further co-located sites due before year end, and is scouting additional roadside and regional plots across New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria.
Moving from an enclosed food court to a highway service centre or an airport terminal changes almost every operating assumption. Food court units draw on captive daytime foot traffic with heavy lunch peaks. Transit and roadside sites demand split-shift staffing, heavier kitchen fit-out and genuine evening volume to carry the rent. It is a different business wearing the same brand.
The headline commitments:
New Zealand is the immediate cross-border priority. Soul Origin runs four stores there today and has mapped roughly ten additional openings through to 2028 — a measured trans-Tasman build rather than a land grab. That sequencing mirrors the disciplined approach VF has seen from other Australian multi-brand QSR groups signing franchise deals at pace.
Extended hours in roadside and transit locations require a broader offer, and kitchens across the network are rolling out hot dinner items, matcha drinks and an expanded iced beverage range. Side dishes and add-ons first tested in the drive-through prototypes are being carried back into traditional metro counters — a two-way transfer between formats that is becoming standard practice in fast-casual and QSR formats across Asia Pacific and MENA.
The expansion arrives alongside a planned handover. Chief financial officer George Gebran steps into the chief executive role on 1 October to run the operational build-out. Co-founder and managing director Hao Quach moves out of day-to-day management on the same date, remaining with the business to focus on long-term strategy, market entry and corporate development — a structure that keeps founder judgement on international expansion while handing execution to a finance-trained operator.
Soul Origin’s plan is a useful read for anyone assessing fast-casual rights in the region, for three reasons.
First, non-traditional real estate is where the unit growth is going. As mall occupancy costs rise, airports, fuel forecourts, hospitals and campuses are absorbing the formats that used to default to food courts. Investors evaluating a brand should now ask which formats it has actually proven, not just how many stores it operates.
Second, fuel and convenience partnerships are becoming a repeatable channel. The Ampol arrangement gives Soul Origin a site pipeline it does not have to source deal by deal — the kind of structural advantage worth weighing when comparing brands under a master franchise or area development structure.
Third, a founder moving to strategy and market entry while a CFO takes operations usually signals that international licensing is about to get more serious attention. For operators in Southeast Asia and the Gulf tracking Australian concepts, that is the moment to open a conversation — before territory conversations become competitive. VF’s guidance on how to buy a franchise across Asia Pacific and MENA sets out what that first approach should cover.
Source: RetailNews Asia — Soul Origin to Double Store Network to 400 Locations over 10 Years
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