{{title}}
{{byline}}
{{byline}}
Name: Andy Hunter
Brands: Jeremiah's Italian Ice
Units: 3
Years in franchising: 16
Parent name(s) in franchising: Mike Hunter
Brands: Subway, Tropical Smoothie Cafe, Marco's Pizza, Jeremiah's Italian Ice
Years in franchising: 39
I was a junior at William & Mary when my dad was approached by a franchise development team and given the opportunity to choose any market in the country to build. He and my mom did their research and chose the Carolinas. Watching that process, which included due diligence, market selection, and the commitment to starting over somewhere new, helped me decide to join the family business while I was still in school.
That's how it tends to work for a lot of second-generation operators. It's not usually one moment that pulls you in. It's years of watching a parent build something real, until being part of it starts to feel more compelling than whatever else you were planning.
Yes, I work alongside my father. I run the day-to-day operations across our Carolinas territory, and he plays more of a senior advisory role. The way we've structured it is that if we are not both on the same page, the decision doesn't move forward. When something must be decided and we can't get there together, his experience leads.
I think that kind of framework is what makes a family partnership function properly. Agreeing on how decisions get made before a hard one comes up keeps disagreements healthy and the relationship intact. A lot of family partnerships run into trouble not because of the business, but because they never had that conversation.
My dad opened his first Subway as a college student in the mid-1980s. By the time I was sitting across from Jeremiah's evaluating the opportunity, I had close to four decades of his experience to draw from. I already knew how to read a franchise agreement, think about a site, and ask the right questions about unit economics before signing anything. That foundation doesn't have to be built from scratch. I think that's the clearest advantage of growing up in a franchise family. The learning curve still exists, but you start from a different place than someone coming in for the first time.
Growing the business in a way that meets the goals of the entire family. We don't move forward on a decision unless we're both aligned on it, which means ambition must be balanced with consensus. It's not always a natural fit.
I don't think the challenge for most second-generation operators is a lack of drive. It's learning to move at a pace the partnership can support. Moving quickly and moving together aren't always the same thing, and figuring out where that line is takes time.
Results. From the beginning, our approach was to open our first location and run it at the highest possible level operationally. Not just profitably, but as a genuine showcase for what the brand can look like. We've held that store to a standard that everything else gets measured against. That store is where we bring prospective franchisees when they want to understand what a well-run Jeremiah's looks like.
Inheriting a parent's reputation gives you a head start, but credibility still must be earned. For second-generation owners, I think it gets earned the same way it does for anyone: through what the business produces.
All the time. My dad has consistently said to only take advice from people who have done the job themselves. That filter eliminates a lot of noise when you're trying to make decisions. We talk shop constantly. It's just part of how we operate. I'm not scheduling time with a business consultant. I'm getting that same level of experience through everyday conversation with someone who's been doing this for 40 years across four brands.
I think second-generation franchisees sometimes underestimate what that access truly represents. People pay a lot of money to get that kind of guidance from outside. When it's available as a matter of routine, it's easy to take for granted, and it really shouldn't be.
There are a lot more options today than when my dad was getting started, which means you must be more discerning about what you choose. The brands worth pursuing are the ones with a proven track record, a loyal customer base, and territories where there's still room to grow. That evaluation matters more now than it did when the landscape was simpler.
But the biggest shift I'd point to isn't technology or marketing, but delegation. My parents worked their first Subway open to close for 13 straight months. They paid off the loan early and used that to get their second store. That kind of personal investment is what builds a foundation. It's also what can limit someone at a certain scale. Getting to multi-unit, multi-concept operations means building a team and trusting it to run without you standing over it. That doesn't come naturally to someone who built everything with their own hands.
I came into this with a higher comfort level around delegation, partly because I grew up watching the business run with a team already in place. I think that's something the second generation tends to bring in that the first generation had to learn the hard way. It's one of the more underrated advantages of coming up inside a franchise family.
It's all I've ever known, so for me it hasn't felt like a change. It's just been the way things work. My wife Sarah is our accountant, and my brother-in-law is our controller. The business and the family are woven together, and that creates a kind of flexibility that's hard to replicate in a conventional career. When the team is built well enough to keep things running, it provides greater flexibility.
My dad built that life over decades. I've been fortunate to grow up in it. For second-generation franchisees, I think that continuity is very underrated, and it's one of the better arguments for staying inside the family business rather than building something entirely separate.