A Local Touch: Franchisees Weave into the Fabric of Their Communities

Every October, businesses across the nation roll out a variety of pumpkin-themed promotions such as Dunkin’s Pumpkin Spice Grahams, Chick-fil-A’s Iced Pumpkin Pie Lattes, and Cicis Pizza’s Pumpkin Spice Cinnamon Rolls.

Gary Peterson adapted those pumpkin-related marketing pitches for customers at his Herriman and Lehi, Utah, Grease Monkey locations. Anyone stopping in for an oil change, emissions test, or fall tune-up gets a free pumpkin.

“That one is a big one for us,” Peterson says of the promotion that gives away as many as 2,000 pumpkins annually. “They love it.”

It’s a $6 pumpkin, but it’s a big deal for customers, many of whom are repeat clients, Peterson says. It’s not about pumpkins. It’s about making connections and becoming part of the fabric of the population he serves. Franchise operators know that local marketing makes good sense because that’s where their customers are.

“Businesses that routinely engage with their communities often see stronger customer loyalty and long-term success,” Peterson recently wrote in an article for Franchising.com. “Showing up is more than a kind gesture; it’s a year-round growth strategy.”

Showing up

Local marketing can take multiple forms. It can mean donating to coat drives in winter, sponsoring a high school baseball team in the spring, or providing water for thirsty runners competing in a summer 5K.

Franchise operators can also contribute by providing their buildings for public meetings and encouraging workers to help construct houses for Habitat for Humanity. Some use their websites to congratulate children on school achievements or act as information centers during inclement weather.

“Community is everything,” says Justin Livingston, a franchisee of three Ziggi’s Coffee locations in the Greater Boulder, Colorado, area, and vice president for franchise development for the beverage company. “Community is our family, staff, and the customers that we serve.”

To turn businesses into community fixtures, franchisees must invest in events, programs, and celebrations that are important to customers, Livingston says. That helps form bonds with consumers and builds trust and engagement.

“We do that by being very present and participating in a way where people come to feel good and safe and happy,” Livingston says. “We create that kind of beacon in our communities that lifts everybody up.”

The investment takes work. For instance, Livingston says, his Ziggi’s location in Louisville, Colorado, donated 3,000 cups of coffee for this year’s AdventHealth Avista Louisville Turkey Trot. The donation was about 10 times the amount of java the store normally brews a day.

That meant bringing in staff early to hand out coffee to runners. Held every Thanksgiving, the 5K raises money for Community Food Share, a food bank addressing hunger in Colorado’s Boulder and Broomfield counties.

“Our store was crazy and packed full of staff to serve folks who had just finished the race or were just coming to the race,” he says, adding that this was the third year the store participated in the event. “It was a cold morning. We gave away a bunch of gifts and had buy-one, get-one free offers.”

The work had to be done quickly. Normally, the Louisville store serves about 300 customers during an entire day.

“We probably gave away 95% of those 3,000 cups of coffee in like 40 minutes,” says Livingston, whose other Ziggi’s Coffee locations are in Broomfield and Lafayette. “When the race started, I said, ‘Buckle up, we’ve got about 15 minutes before we see the first fast finisher.’”

Livingston has been with Mead, Colorado-based Ziggi’s since 2016, and he became a franchisee three years ago. “This brand is so focused on service to community and family values and leaving the world better than the way we found it,” he says.

Connections

Livingston and his team also work with schools through donations, sponsor a Little League team, collect Toys for Tots, help with a coat drive in partnership with a local real estate agent, and host Coffee with a Cop events to bring the community closer to law enforcement leaders.

“The police department is a wonderful presence in our community, and we host Coffee with a Cop at the same store used for the Turkey Trot,” Livingston says. “It allows the community to just come in and interact with officers and the community liaisons about concerns and to ask questions.”

Building relationships with the community is especially important in this online era, Livingston says. Technological advances are good for efficiency but can make it difficult for business owners to connect with their customers. Customers can skip one-on-one interactions with franchise operators by making purchases on apps or using delivery services such as Uber Eats and DoorDash. Personal connections aren’t as frequent as they once were, so it’s challenging to create fans who come back over and over, Livingston says.

“We have to meet customers where they are,” he says, “and sometimes that is ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’ That’s generational. I’m of a generation where I want to talk to you. That’s part of the experience for me. But that’s not for everybody.

“I sit in our stores, and I hear these amazing young folks talking to customers … and relating to them in a genuine and really authentic way,” he continues. “But I also see people come into stores, sit down, and order on the app for pickup. Then they walk up, get their order, and never really have any interaction. And that’s okay.”

“Midnight marketing”

The relationship between a franchisee and a community is often built organically, says Maryna Shuliakouskaya, who owns 12 Aroma Joe’s stores in Maine. Recently, her Naples, Maine, store organized a raffle to raise money for a family in need. Customers were offered $15 raffle tickets during the one-day, six-hour event. Prizes included Aroma Joe’s gift cards and gift baskets. The store raised $700.

“The team just wanted to do a fundraiser for a customer, who lost her husband,” Shuliakouskaya says. “So, they did.”

Other relationships, however, are born out of hard work. Shuliakouskaya says she periodically sits down in the wee hours of the morning to find community partnership opportunities for her stores by scouring the agendas of local governments, chambers of commerce, and civic groups such as the Rotary Club. She calls her process “midnight marketing.”

“I’ll just email them or Facebook message them or Instagram message them and say, ‘I’m the owner of an Aroma Joe’s coffee. How can I help?’” she says. “I tell them I can offer product, or you can do a fundraiser in my shop. I tell them I can do free drinks or products. Ninety-nine percent of the time, they respond and say yes.”

To ensure she makes the sale, she helps an organization she’s pitching imagine how her business fits into their needs.

“When you’re reaching out, don’t just ask them what they want. Give them examples of what you can do for them,” Shuliakouskaya says. “That way, the request from them is realistic for you.”

The effort has paid off. Her stores have participated in a fashion show that raised money for breast cancer awareness. They’ve also provided sponsorships for sports clubs, high school plays, and clothing drives.

Close to her heart has been supporting Maine’s international community. A native of Belarus, Shuliakouskaya has used her stores to raise funds to help build a school in Peru and improve water systems in Honduras. For one project, she and her team partnered with a local Rotary Club to buy equipment for visually impaired children in Belarus.

“Customers were super excited to find out where Belarus is and asking how they can donate directly,” she says. “It was not just about $1 off a coffee or energy drink; it was about being passionate about something.”

At the end of the day, she says, franchisees can’t expect their businesses to grow solely on their product. Operators need customers to see them and their stores as part of the community.

“You have to get to know your community,” she says. “There are so many 5K walks, Christmas parades, galas, food collections. There are endless opportunities for franchisees to get involved in.”

Locally owned

Mikaila Kemp, who operates a family-run Ziggi’s Coffee in Clayton, North Carolina, says business owners can connect with a community by emphasizing their local ownership. Customers are often more supportive of a franchise if they feel that one of their own is putting a local spin on a national product.

“That is huge,” she says. “In recent years, supporting local businesses has been a huge movement. Because there are multiple Ziggi’s stores across the country, people think of Ziggi’s as a chain. But we make it clear that we are locally owned. We have digital assets online that stress our local ownership. We have print marketing outside of our building that says in bold, ‘Locally Owned.’”

Kemp’s family opened their Ziggi’s location in December 2023 and plans to open two more stores. The Clayton store is owned by Kemp’s father-in-law, a serial entrepreneur who has had many businesses, including a home care company in Colorado.

The family chose Ziggi’s, Kemp says, out of a desire to recoup some of the money she spent as a longtime loyal customer. In addition, there is a surprise family tie to Brandon Knudsen, who co-founded the brand with his wife, Camrin Knudsen, in 2004.

“I used to frequent Ziggi’s every day before I went to work,” says Kemp, who used to live in Colorado. “My husband asked, ‘What’s Ziggi’s? Why are you spending all our money there?’ He started looking up the company and realized that the CEO and founder of Ziggi’s actually coached him in middle school in basketball. So, there is kind of a family connection there.”

Having owned a moving company with her husband when they were in their 20s, Kemp says she was acutely aware that she needed to do more than post an “open for business” sign in the window when they launched their Ziggi’s store. She needed to be intentional in how to reach customers in the early days.

“Before we opened, the first thing we did was buy a few coffee brewers for our church and started serving Ziggi’s coffee prior to the building even being open,” she says. “That was to get people familiar with the coffee, familiar with the name, and familiar with us.”

After opening, they started dropping off samples of Ziggi’s drinks to various businesses along with coupons and menus. Kemp and her husband, who share operating responsibilities at the store, also partnered with other businesses to get the word out, including a recent collaboration with a local medical spa.

“We like to do really random, unique events such as a dog days event where customers can build their own pup cup on the patio,” she says. “We have also done fundraisers.”

Other activities include giving coffee cups and tumblers to regular customers as Christmas presents, contributing to raffles, donating items to a dog shelter, and giving to more fundraisers than Kemp can count.

“I don’t like to say no,” she says. “I like to think that everything offers a chance for learning, a chance to be creative. Obviously, we must weigh the risks. We must look at the return on investment. But we try, if we can, to put a yes on the table.”

Multi-unit benefits

Rashmi Sharma, who owns six locations of education provider Sylvan Learning in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, became aware of the company after enrolling her eldest son. He began reading at the age of 2, and Sharm was attracted to Sylvan because of its focus on personalized learning.

“It happened organically because I was looking for educational resources for my son,” says Sharma, a mother of two and a former engineer in the oil, gas, and green energy industries. “He was pretty advanced, and because of that, I was looking for resources that could enrich kids.”

That personal experience has made it easier for her to connect to the community because she thinks like a parent, she says. Parents are attracted to what her franchise brings to the community: an organization that offers tutoring at several Boys & Girls Club locations, provides free or subsidized education assessments for economically disadvantaged families and gives scholarships to those in need of financial assistance.

Her franchises help area school districts find grants that can help pay for Sylvan services. The businesses support school fundraisers and aid sports programs in the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, Texas.

Sylvan’s services can be crucial for students still struggling with learning loss because of the shutdown of schools during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“A lot of students fell behind even though they weren’t held back,” she says. “They can be in grades four and five but still have gaps from grades one and two. Unfortunately, they keep getting pushed forward, but they are not really understanding the material.”

Sharma says that franchisees who own multiple locations of a business can promote that as a community benefit. Writing for Franchising.com recently, Sharma says, “As multi-unit franchisees, we have both the scale and the responsibility to be catalysts for positive change. Multi-unit franchisees enjoy additional advantages, such as bulk purchasing for charitable initiatives, preferred pricing, and operational efficiencies that make it easier to sustain long-term partnerships. The goodwill generated often leads to increased customer loyalty and organic, sustainable growth across all your locations.”

Extended family

Rob Hanson says franchisees often become part of a community’s fabric because of the people who work for them. The owner of nine Aroma Joe’s locations in New Hampshire, Hanson has a staff made up of teens and young adults who have strong connections to their communities.

“Many of our students are high school students, and we end up going to high school sports events and high school plays,” he says. “You name it, we go because it’s like an extended family. And through those connections, we make connections in the schools where maybe they are doing some kind of event, and we’ll donate coffee, or we’ll donate energy drinks.”

A former educator and school principal before switching to franchising a decade ago, Hanson says building community relationships requires franchisees to be on the ground. That includes talking one-on-one with dissatisfied customers, getting to know the movers and shakers of local civic organizations, and supporting fellow business owners to create symbiotic partnerships.

He has found opportunities on Facebook, at teacher workshops, and during special occasions such as a midday New Year’s Eve celebration for children at one of the libraries in his service area. He donated four and a half gallons of hot chocolate for the event.

“You have to connect on a human level,” Hanson says. “Those people skills that I’ve learned over the years are serving me well today.”

A strong community connection can also help enhance sluggish sales, he says. One of his stores is partnering with a nurse who is raising money for cancer research as part of her plan to run in the 2026 Boston Marathon. The store will donate $1 to her fundraiser for every sale of a drink of the runner’s choice between January and March.

“That came out of a regular conversation with her,” Hanson says. “I tell my staff to look for opportunities to connect with the community on a genuine basis and to seek ways in which we can add value.”

The payoff can be surprising, Hanson says.

At the beginning of the pandemic, his staff alerted him that a drive-thru customer at his Hooksett, New Hampshire, store wanted to speak with him. The request immediately sent shivers down his spine. “I said to myself, ‘Oh, Rob, this is never good,’” he recalls.

The customer, a nurse, told him that the professionalism of the store’s staff brought her comfort every day during a difficult time. She said she was a mother of three and worried she would never see them again because of the work she did. Her daily interactions with the store’s staff brought her peace.

“Your staff makes my day, and that’s why I keep coming back every single day,” Hanson recalls her saying.

Hanson says the conversation deeply affected him. “At this point, I was a cross between having goose bumps and tears in my eyes,” he says, “because we are making a difference and having a positive impact on people’s lives.”