Goody’s has announced its first Australian store will be housed at the Greek Centre of Contemporary Culture.

Taking up the lease of the ground floor retail space, the Greek fast food chain will be placed to feed hungry workers in the CBD and the Greek Australian community.

It’s the first Greek establishment to set up on Lonsdale Street in more than a decade, bringing much needed life to the Lonsdale Street Greek precinct.
George Illiopoulos, alongside business partner Con Tangalakis, says the location is a calculated decision, hoping to keep their loyal audience happy and bring in mainstream appeal.

“The actual target audience is definitely mainstream, we really want to penetrate [the wider community] because the Greeks know it,” Mr Iliopoulos tells Neos Kosmos.

“We want to offer something different and something new into the Australian market.”

Currently the duo is working to get building permits signed with the council to start transforming the ground floor into the familiar Goody’s look.

Mr Iliopoulos hopes that construction can start in about six weeks, after which they will then move on to hiring and training staff.

The first shop will hire around 30 staff members, who will be trained by Goody’s staff from Greece to make sure the service and feel translates to Australia.

The only change to the product in Australia will be the produce, which will be sourced locally.

“Even though the recipe will be from Greece all the produce and the food will be local,” Mr Iliopoulos says. “We’re going to use Australian produce, Australian beef. It will translate well, because the recipe and the ingredients will be exactly the same, there will be no changes whatsoever.”

While the Goody’s Australian saturation is in its infancy, Greece is expecting a big turnover in Australia.

The headquarters have green-lit the Australian licencees to set up a minimum of 10 stores in five years, and judging by the demand Mr Iliopoulos and Mr Tangalakis have received, finding franchisees won’t be hard.

“We have been inundated with phone calls, we know that there’s going to be a lot of Greek Australian businesspeople applying for a franchise, but we would like to do this very, very slowly and make sure we do it right,” Mr Iliopoulos says.

There will be two sized shops available for franchise owners, a small and a large to cater to demand.

A lot will hinge on the popularity of the CBD flagship, with the shop scheduled to welcome its first customers around Easter time next year.

Neos Kosmos recently conducted a poll asking if our readers believed Goody’s could break into the Australian market, and more than 69 per cent of respondents said yes.

It might have a loyal customer base in Australia already through the Greek community, but that doesn’t necessarily mean success.

Successful franchises have seen their demise in Australia; most recently American coffee giant Starbucks failed to reach its projected saturation and closed a number of stores thanks to a lack of interest.

The Australian market will give its verdict on Goody’s in a couple of months.