News

Tasti-D-Lite expands to Australia

November 4, 2010

Tasti D-Lite has signed a development deal with Friezer Australia Pty Ltd. to expand in Australia. The 30-unit, five-year deal calls for the first store opening in Melbourne in spring 2011.

"Once my family began to research Tasti D-Lite, they all fell in love with the product, the brand and the overall concept. Australia is an ideal market for this delicious, guilt-free treat," said Georgina Crawford, director of marketing and operations at Friezer Australia, "While we have a robust healthy-lifestyle industry here, the country also suffers from some of the highest rates of obesity in the world. Tasti D-Lite offers a great-tasting, healthier alternative to ice cream and other frozen treats currently available in the market."

With an extensive background in the retail, property development and entertainment industries in Australia, Asia and Europe, Georgina's father, John Crawford, will serve as CEO of Friezer Australia.

Jeremy Crawford, Gerogina's brother, formerly a music and entertainment entrepreneur, will serve as director of sales and development.

Tasti D-Lite first launched its franchise program in 2008. Since then, the company has grown to 50 locations and has secured commitments to open more than 300 in the coming years. Internationally, the company has already established a presence through master franchise relationships in the United Arab Emirates, Mexico and South Korea.

The first two locations opened in Mexico City earlier this year, followed by the opening of two locations in Dubai in October.

"This is an exciting time for the Tasti D-Lite brand," said Jim Amos, Tasti D-Lite's chairman and CEO. "Australia is a new market — one that we believe will quickly embrace Tasti D-Lite for its great taste and exceptional nutritional profile. We're proud to welcome the Crawfords as Tasti D-Lite master franchisees and are confident that their passion, commitment and knowledge of the brand will enable them to grow the concept successfully throughout Australia."

In the U.S., the company is leveraging Apple’s iPad to serve as customer information kiosks at all new locations moving forward. The iPads, internally referred to as “TastiPads,” will run a custom built Tasti D-Lite application and also will be phased in at existing locations.

According to a story on mashable, the iPads are housed within a Tasti D-Lite-branded case and mounted inside stores.

From the story:

Customers can interface with the device to pull up nutritional information on flavors, read up on Tasti D-Lite’s history, sign up for flavor alerts, electronically sign the store guestbook and register their TreatCards.

Tasti D-Lite is running Google Analytics behind the scenes of the web-based application to track how customers are using the iPad at each store location.

Tasti-D-Lite is not the first restaurant concept to utilize the iPad for customer use.

Au Bon Pain has been testing the use of device in two locations since July. When the restaurant is busy, the staff uses two iPads to take customer orders and payments. Managers each carry an iPod Touch — which has the same responsive touchscreen — loaded with the same app to help with additional linebusting.

Retail Brand Group is using the iPad in its Germantown, Md., location to build customer loyalty.

The idea, said RBG president Husein Kitabwalla, was to create an atmosphere where families could eat dinner together while giving kids an opportunity to access tutoring or homework assignments online.

The company launched the iPad program just after the July Fourth holiday and will run through the test through the Fall season.