Sumo Salad has opened three outlets in Sydney's central business district since February 2003 and initial success could mean it mushrooms across Australia in the coming years.
Co-founders Luke Bayliss, 27 and James Miller, 29 are planning to open 55 Sumo Salad outlets by mid-2007.
Three more locations will open in the Sydney CBD within the next three to four months before a suburban roll-out in major shopping centre locations.
Sumo Salad will then be introduced to city locations in Brisbane and Melbourne before the same process of branching out into the suburbs.
In a good CBD location a Sumo Salad store turns over close to $100,000 per month and the partners aim is for each store to turn over between $850,000 and $1.3 million, depending on the quality of location.
The concept, which allows customers - predominantly women 18-40 years-old - to choose from 50 different ingredients and 15 different dressings in any combination - quickly came to the attention of the bigger players in the growing fresh food and juice marketplace.
Chairman of the recently-listed Signature Brands - owner of Pulp Juice - Ian Duffell tried to get on board Sumo Salad a year ago but was denied by the Sumo team of two.
"I was interested in the way they put a different twist on serving that kind of food," said Duffell who has got together with his mate, Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson, to take Pulp Juice overseas.
Of Sumo Salad, Duffell said he wondered whether Bayliss and Miller have the resources to achieve their aim of being market leaders.
"It was certainly creating a lot of attention in that part of town (around the first store in Liverpool Street, Sydney, in 2003) and we had a conversation with them because I was interested in getting involved with helping them (to) roll it out," he said.
"Unfortunately now there are other types of similar offering. At the time it was fairly unique with the healthy aspect, the variety and the production line.
"In my opinion, unless you roll it out very quickly somebody else will do it quicker. A small operation with just a few friends, without significant backing, will find it hard to get the roll-out ramped up fast enough to fend off others that will come in and see the opportunity and take it faster."
Duffell said to be number one or two in the market Sumo Salad occupies it would need to be opening one store per week.
Boost Juice for example has opened 80 stores within two years and Pulp Juice plans to open 60 stores over the next 12 months.
But Bayliss said interest from potential Sumo Salad franchisees has been huge.
"A lot of people are contacting us now trying to hand-pick the best couple of sites that are coming on the market," he said.
"Even a lot of people who have gone through the approval stage of Boost Juice are now coming across to us because they see more growth potential."
The three-member Sumo Salad office generally works 12-hour-plus days, six days a week.
The partners worked together in New York and Chicago installing fibre optic networks when the seed of an idea for Sumo was sown.
After the usual story of being laughed out of the offices of a number of venture capitalists and private investors a personal friend came up with the funds needed to get the first store in Liverpool Street off the ground.
"We saw branded salad places in America but most of them didn't cater for different palates. They were mainly heavy, bogged-down pasta salads. We thought living in Australia we've got the best produce in the world, why not leverage off that and make a business that compliments the produce," Bayliss said.
The success of McDonald's with its new salads-plus menu has enhanced rather then impacted sales since its inception.
"They are just educating the mass consumer market towards a healthy alternative and we fit within that profile, so they are bringing us up," Bayliss said.