GF: Would you say that IV drip franchising is understood by the public, or is education still a barrier for growth?
RC: In the U.K.? No. Across North America and Asia? Yes. These places have been practicing IV vitamin therapy since 1980, they know the benefits and that it works. In the U.K., we have a tendency to misunderstand the role of the NHS; we believe if the NHS is not providing the service, then it is not needed, which is not true.
The NHS is there to treat serious illnesses and life-threatening diseases, but IV vitamin therapy is about delivering vitamins and nutrients directly to the bloodstream, bypassing the six stages of digestion meaning you get 100 per cent of the nutrients. This increases a whole host of functionality from immunity to optimum performance.
We are operating in a trillion-dollar industry and the room for growth is immense. The larger we get, the more locations we have, and the more people will understand. We are going through the snowball effect as we speak. Get A Drip made IV vitamin drips and injections mainstream in the U.K.
GF: What’s the biggest challenge facing your industry right now?
RC: Like almost every industry, we have been impacted by COVID, lockdowns, surging inflation/interest rates and decreasing consumer spending. There really has been non-stop global crises one after another since early 2020.
It would be great to have a few years with no major global disruption. However, every cloud has a silver lining – COVID has really raised awareness of people being empowered to take control of their own health and wellness. COVID severity has been linked to so many issues such as obesity, low Vitamin D levels and a person’s general health and wellness.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of studies were completed looking at the benefits of vitamin D, vitamin C and zinc in relation to immune function, which has really helped advance the science within the supplement industry and thus had a good impact for us. I think most companies within the health and wellness space have/will come out of the other side of COVID much stronger than before.
GF: What do you find fulfilling about being a franchisor?
RC: Since Get A Drip launched in 2017, we’ve constantly had people asking if they could franchise our brand as they loved the concept, so I am very excited to be in a position to do this properly.
It takes years of work and preparation to prepare a brand for a fully accredited franchise. If the franchise is not accredited, it probably means it can’t be, so don’t buy it!
For the U.K., this is the British Franchise Association (bfa). As the franchisor, we are contractually striving to improve products, processes and procedures that will benefit our franchisees as well as the main brand.
We love being able to trial these new ideas on our core brand, before making them available to our franchisees – keeping us a truly innovative company. We also love watching the Get A Drip brand grow exponentially by working with some really talented and driven franchisees that share our values and ambitions.
