My working life..

Jun 20 2008

Billy Stenhouse, co-founder of snack food chain Baguette Express

Starting each day at 5.30am with a three-mile run keeps Billy Stenhouse fresh as his Baguette Express chain expands.

He says: "The first job of the day is to check my e-mails, which can take a bit of time. We're now rolling out the Baguette Express concept in earnest south of the border, following on from our success in Scotland and Northern Ireland, so inevitably the amount of correspondence I have to deal with has been steadily increasing for some time.

"Next, I attend to necessary phone calls, and of course again the number of calls I have to make has increased along with the number of our outlets, and there are many different aspects of the business to attend to in each of them."

All franchisees of the business undergo training at the headquarters in Haddington, East Lothian, or in Ballymena before launch.

While Stenhouse loves his job, there is one aspect which gets him down.

He admits: "Our franchisees are great, but with more than 30 outlets, soon to be many more, the admin side of things is a bind - I don't make any secret of it - because as someone who's first and foremost a people person, and a hands-on operator, I'd much rather be in the shops, seeing what's happening for myself and dealing with people one to one."

Despite the time pressures he still tries to find space in his diary to get out and about into each shop.

He added: "Of course there are days when a trip to somewhere farther afield means Robin, my brother and co-founder, has to take up the slack in the office or vice-versa I cover for him."

By late afternoon it is back to the office to deal with more email and phone calls. However, Stenhouse does not grudge the hard work and says: "Everything is going exactly as we planned, and if it makes extra work for us that's only to be expected."