Duncan Berry is spreading his wings at Bluebird Care

Whether they’ve taken a nasty fall or are struggling to look after themselves, it’s not always possible to take care of loved ones yourself. However, trusting someone else to do it is a real leap of faith, which is why Duncan Berry, chief operating officer (COO) of Bluebird Care, is committed to helping the franchise bring quality home care to the masses. “People will invariably have guilt and concerns around asking somebody else to come and care for their relatives,” he says. “It’s about reassuring them that this is something that we are experts in.”

And without a doubt, Berry is the man for the job, bringing years of franchising experience to bear in his journey with the company. Even as a youngster growing up in Yorkshire, he showed a certain panache for making money. “I remember at a fairly young age buying a number of postcards and posters from Athena Postcards and managing to sell them to school friends for a profit,” says Berry. “Whether that qualifies as entrepreneurialism or just basically taking advantage of mates I’m not sure.” But, all joking aside, Berry clearly had an aptitude for business: after finishing school, he took a year out to help out at his parents’ business Burton Safe Company, eventually helping to spread it to London and the south-east. “As I became more involved, I was literally out with safes in the back of a car, going round looking to sell them to locksmiths and office-supply companies,” he says. “That’s always rather stuck with me: in whatever you do, sales are paramount.”

However, while Berry had clearly earned his chops when it came to sales, the same could not be said for his schoolwork. “I would love to tell you some fabulous story that I did stunningly well in my A-levels and I had a long list of universities clamouring for me to go to them but it couldn’t be further from the truth,” Berry says. “The reality was with the grades I’d gotten, I only had a choice between two.” While Berry’s initial interest was in sport, a conversation with his parents helped convince him that there was a better route available to him. “They said that business was much more likely to help you find a broader basis for future life,” he says. “I saw the sense in that and went to Newcastle Poly to study business.”

On graduating from university in 1996, Berry began looking for work down in London and came across Venture Marketing Group (VMG). Then named Careers in Industry (CII), the publishing and exhibitions company was looking for experienced salespeople to help it grow a new project on the other side of the pond. “Mel Stride, who was the owner, he went to America with a view of setting up a franchise exhibition there on the west coast,” says Berry. “We were literally selling the franchise exhibitions on the phone to Americans we’d never met. That was a fantastic experience.” After helping make this new exhibition a success, Berry returned to the UK and was put in charge of sourcing advertisers for Business Franchise, the company’s franchise title, something that gave him a real crash course on the ins and outs of the industry. “It gave me a great opportunity to go and meet a number of franchisors,” he says. “That helped me get a greater sense for the franchise model and how it works, how franchisors viewed the business and how they wanted to see things grow.”

And this didn’t just give him insight into the industry: bringing him onto the radar of the master franchisee for Cartridge World, it led him to his first opportunity to actually get hands on with a franchise. “They wanted to expand and needed somebody to come in and help with their sales, marketing and franchise development,” he says. “It was a really exciting opportunity to move from one side of franchising to the other.” Initially concentrating on setting the franchise’s marketing plan and guiding prospective franchisees through the process, it was when the UK master franchisee sold the rights back to the franchisor that Berry was given an opportunity to step up as director of European franchising. “Cartridge World wanted to move further into Europe,” he says. “They wanted me to not only to help support strategically the existing master franchisees but also to try and find some new ones.”

Gaining such a grounding in franchising stood Berry in good stead when Choice Hotels Europe came calling, looking for a CEO with a high degree of familiarity with the sector. “It wanted to have somebody in the senior role leading the UK business who’d got franchise experience, rather than hotel experience,” he says. Brought on board to help convert existing hotels to the Choice Hotels brand, Berry found that selling ink and providing people a place to stay were very different franchise propositions. While Choice Hotels’ network numbered just 35 franchisees compared to Cartridge World’s 250, the relative size of each unit meant that the former tended to attract franchisees with grander long-term plans. “It was a very different animal in terms of the investment and return expectations,” he says. “Our focus was on how we could look to support the franchisees’ businesses, make changes where necessary, understand from the franchisees what their frustrations were and what improvements we needed to put in place.”

While his time at Choice Hotels undoubtedly taught Berry a great deal, by 2015 he was ready for something new. “After six years at Choice Hotels, I found myself looking for the next challenge,” Berry says. “Very quickly Bluebird Care came along.” Having sold the company to health franchise giant Caring Brands International in 2013, its co-founders Paul and Lisa Tarsey had stepped away from the day-to-day running of the business and so its new owner was on the hunt for experienced franchising talent to head up its next phase of growth. Joining as Bluebird Care’s new COO, it’s safe to say that Berry had some big shoes to fill.

With a network of 188 franchises in the UK alone and a further 26 in Ireland, it’s clear Bluebird Care has a bright future ahead of it. But Berry is keen to remain pragmatic, rather than chasing pipe dreams. “Some people at the top can get a little carried away with five-year expansion plans or focusing on world domination: you’ve got to be very careful and not get too carried away,” Berry says. “It’s more a case of what are the things in the next 12 or 24 months we need to be planning for, working on and resourcing internally.” One of the big focuses for Bluebird Care’s immediate future is growing its market share within the territories it’s already operating in and this means means bringing as much new blood into the industry as possible. “It’s how can we be looking to make the care sector one that people consider much more of a career they’d like to get involved,” he concludes. “If we can bring more carers in and they can take on more of the demand from customers out there then we’ll be in a far better place.”