How ProLease Express and Managed Services help Bakers Delight scale with confidence and clarity
At a glance
With retail outlets across four countries, Bakers Delight is a franchise success story built on strong systems and support. Learn how the business uses MRI’s ProLease Express and Managed Services to maintain lease management excellence during transition and growth.
Background: Growing an international franchise
Bakers Delight is Australia’s leading bakery franchise, known for its fresh bread, pastries, and crowd favourites like the iconic Cheesymite Scroll. With a loyal customer base and a strong community presence, the brand has become a household name.
Founded in 1980 by husband-and-wife team Roger and Lesley Gillespie, the business has grown from a single bakery to over 500 across Australia, and more than 700 worldwide – in New Zealand, Canada and the US (under the COBS Bread brand).
A key part of Bakers Delight’s robust franchise model is its commitment to handling property and lease management on behalf of its franchisees. This approach lets franchisees focus on what they do best: baking quality products and serving customers.
Cameron Lazarus, Head of Property at Bakers Delight, explained that MRI’s ProLease Express and Managed Services have been central to the business’s success, particularly in bridging staffing gaps and ensuring smooth operations during times of transition.
Managing lease complexity with limited resources
MRI’s deep knowledge of our portfolio and team structure has been key to our success. It’s made the support feel seamless and genuinely tailored to our business.
– Cameron Lazarus, Head of Property, Bakers Delight
Bakers Delight relies on a lean in-house property team to manage lease administration across its vast network of bakery sites. Four property managers are supported by a single property administrator, who is the central hub for processing and updating all lease information.
The property administrator maintains critical lease data in MRI ProLease, which integrates directly with the company’s data warehouse and financial reporting systems. Accuracy and consistency are essential, but hard to maintain when key personnel are stretched or unavailable.
“Everything flows through our lease administrator. They keep our tenancy schedule up to date, and that data feeds into our financial reporting,” Cameron explains. “The broader property management team doesn’t have access to the platform as we want things to be centralised, consistent and accurate. So without a dedicated administrator, we struggle.”
Staying on course through shifting conditions
While Bakers Delight had been using ProLease Express (formerly LeaseEagle) since 2018, a turning point came during COVID-19. The period of heightened business uncertainty and a surge in lease modification created new pressures. MRI’s Managed Services stepped in to support the team, ensuring lease updates continued smoothly.
“I was already stretched, and without Managed Services, I honestly don’t know how I would have kept up,” Cameron says. “The workload would have impacted the whole team. It would’ve had a knock-on effect across the business.”
Having MRI’s team step in ensured critical lease data remained accurate, supporting informed decisions across finance, operations and the wider franchise network at a time when clarity mattered most.
Reducing risk through accuracy and oversight
Accurate lease data isn’t just a nice-to-have for Bakers Delight, it’s critical to meeting franchise obligations and maintaining trust. With varying lease terms and critical dates to track, even a small error can have serious consequences.
“Missing a renewal or exercise date might not always result in a legal claim, but it could damage the relationship with a franchisee,” Cameron explains. “We’re obliged to act in their best interests, so knowing we have Managed Services there when we need them gives us confidence that nothing is slipping through the cracks.”
By ensuring lease data was kept up to date and accurate, Managed Services helped mitigate risk and uphold Bakers Delight’s commitment to its network.
Supporting the business through further transition
If you need consistency, accuracy, and support you can count on, especially if you’re new to ProLease Express, Managed Services makes total sense. Having someone there to guide you in real time makes all the difference.
– Cameron Lazarus, Head of Property, Bakers Delight
The need for external support didn’t end with the pandemic. More recently, Bakers Delight faced another challenge: a change in lease administrator left a temporary skills gap within the property team. Rather than risk disruption to lease data or reporting accuracy, the business again turned to MRI’s Managed Services. This time it was not just to keep things running, but also to help onboard a new team member.
“We knew there would be a gap before our new administrator could get fully up to speed,” Cameron explains. “So we used Managed Services to cover that gap and help train her. It worked out incredibly well.”
Although MRI’s platform offers robust self-service support, including how-to guides and video tutorials, Cameron believes the value of human guidance made a real difference during onboarding.
“The platform has lots of helpful resources but having someone talk you through it with personal support is incredibly valuable,” he says. “Our new administrator had never used the system before and was anxious about it. Knowing she had someone to guide her took a lot of the pressure off.”
What started as a plan to use a set number of support hours was ultimately more efficient than expected. “She needed less help than we thought, which was a great outcome. But it also showed us how powerful the Managed Services team can be, not just as a stopgap, but as a true onboarding partner,” Cameron says.
Looking for a powerful lease management solution with added support?
The Bakers Delight story highlights how MRI’s ProLease Express, combined with Managed Services, can simplify lease administration and reduce internal pressure.
With a powerful platform and expert support on hand, businesses can stay on top of day-to-day operations without the cost or complexity of building a full in-house team.
Ready to learn more? Contact us and book a demo to see the solution in action.