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1987 was a good year for franchising. Up to then, franchising was young, brash, and not always professional. Franchises weren’t much concerned with history. They were built mostly by young entrepreneurs who saw an opportunity and grabbed it, looking forward, not backward. The first 30 years of modern business format franchising had the feeling of the Wild West (like the Internet of the last 10 years).
  • Eddy Goldberg & Ripley Hotch
  • 3,569 Reads 9 Shares
As the "franchise world" turns toward technology that allows us to respond automatically through emails, send links to articles, and educate customers through "mass information" emails, we may be looking past a simple premise of selling such as "building a relationship."
  • Marc Kiekenapp
  • 3,475 Reads 6 Shares
When was the last time you made an honest assessment of who you have in the most important "chairs" of your operation? Your front-line staff single-handedly sets the tone of your customer service and "packages" your performance day to day. Is your packaging attracting or distracting? Does it gather customers, or chase them away?
  • Gloria Plaisted
  • 3,210 Reads 5 Shares
In the chronicles of franchising history, some names come immediately to mind - Ray Kroc, S. Truett Cathy, Dave Thomas. The names conjure up images of independent-minded entrepreneurs with the savvy, know-how, and vision to create successful business models replicable anywhere. As part of the celebration of Franchise UPDATE's 20th anniversary, we look back at some of these colorful, inspiring, and sometimes controversial characters.
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 4,914 Reads 15 Shares
Today's business environment is filled with incentives to move toward a paperless office, especially considering the ease and low cost involved in storing and sharing electronic data when compared with paper.
  • Dawn Newton
  • 2,954 Reads 8 Shares
We all know to expect death and taxes, but tenants can add one more thing to that list: lease renewals. A lease begins to expire the day it's signed. Yet, how often have you found yourself scrambling to negotiate a renewal in the last couple of months or weeks before the last day? If you're waiting until the last minute to make the critical decision about renewing, and on what terms, you're clearly not dealing from a position of strength.
  • Jeremy Behar
  • 5,466 Reads 259 Shares
In the chronicles of franchising history, some names come immediately to mind - Ray Kroc, S. Truett Cathy, Dave Thomas. The names conjure up images of independent-minded entrepreneurs with the savvy, know-how, and vision to create successful business models replicable anywhere. As part of the celebration of Franchise UPDATE's 20th anniversary, we look back at some of these colorful, inspiring, and sometimes controversial characters.
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 5,059 Reads
The year's fourth quarter marks the anniversary of my start in the investment management business many, many years ago. It also happens to coincide with the time of year my three kids go back to school.
  • Carol Clark
  • 2,892 Reads 1 Shares
How Do I Know? Multiunit franchising offers benefits - and risks - but it's a method of franchising that can be fruitful
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 2,582 Reads 4 Shares
Looking back at how technology has evolved in franchising, by far the most significant changes have taken place in the area of lead management. Some industry experts trace the first concerns over franchise lead management back to right around the invention of fire, while others maintain the issues arose later on in evolution, shortly after Nixon resigned. No matter. Franchise lead management and the use of technology for other mission-critical functions in franchising have come a long way in the past 20 years.
  • Dan Martin
  • 4,263 Reads 12 Shares
When native San Franciscan Ellen Hui left a career in banking in 1989 to take on her first Popeyes Chicken and Biscuits restaurant, she experienced a big culture shock.
  • Debbie Selinsky
  • 4,574 Reads 2 Shares
MY SALON Suite
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The franchise community landscape was dramatically different for executive search 20 years ago. When we began servicing the hiring needs of franchisors in 1983, the franchisor population was in the hundreds, with almost all franchisees, owners of individual locations. A very small number of U.S. franchisors had any international presence.
  • Doug Kushell
  • 3,329 Reads 5 Shares
Until he hit 40, Rick Guerra ran hotels and restaurants "making a lot of money for other people," he says.
  • Debbie Selinsky
  • 3,456 Reads 15 Shares
Business. Opportunity. Two words that go together beautifully: Business Opportunity. For entrepreneurs, it's the stuff that dreams are made of.
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 2,252 Reads 1 Shares
This issue marks the 20th anniversary of Franchise UPDATE, the company and the publication.
  • Ripley Hotch
  • 3,704 Reads 30 Shares
Subway continues to sizzle as one of the hottest franchises going. For the 15th time in the last 20 years, Entrepreneur magazine's annual Franchise 500 rankings have listed Subway as the number-one franchise opportunity. For perspective, when the chain was first named to the list in 1988, it had about 4,000 locations. Today, the chain operates 27,732 shops in 86 countries (as of June 2007).
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 4,051 Reads 40 Shares
Originally published in Area Developer Issue III, 2007, The AD 50 highlights the largest multi-unit franchise companies who support multi-unit franchising.
  • Area Developer Magazine
  • 6,106 Reads 1 Shares
Ed Doherty has been pushing the envelope on growing a business packed with different franchises - lots of them. To date, they include Applebee's (51), Panera Breads (15), Chevys Fresh Mex (3), and an original concept, the Shannon Rose Irish Pub (1), in New Jersey. And ahead on the menu are the 20 El Pollo Loco locations he's developing in New Jersey.
  • John Carroll
  • 5,617 Reads 1 Shares
The incredible surge in outsourcing prospect generation to franchise brokers has - literally - reshaped the sales programs of many franchise systems.
  • Steve Olson
  • 3,246 Reads 5 Shares
I remember the first budget I ever did for a business - for a newsroom where the previous year’s budget had been about $3 million (and 30 years ago, that was some real money). The boss just handed the spreadsheets to me and said, “We need this in a couple of days.”
  • Ripley Hotch
  • 3,302 Reads 1 Shares
So Franchise UPDATE is now 20 years old! When Ripley Hotch asked me to reflect upon developments in franchise law over the last two decades, I was honored. After all, I was there - the whole time and much before! I have been fortunate enough during my career to have served as a member of, a contributor to, or observer for, many of the groups that have influenced the direction of franchise law, and I have read hundreds of precedents that have made franchise law what it is today.
  • Rupert M. Barkoff
  • 3,355 Reads 1,014 Shares
Jersey Mike's Subs
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Remember pulling up to the Jack in the Box drive-thru in the 1970s and placing your order through an over-sized talking Jack head where the voice on the other end sounded like a grown up from a Charlie Brown cartoon. You had no idea what the person on the other end was saying or how your order would turn out. Times have changed and the evolution of technology in the fast food industry is picking up the pace - and making the fast food arena one full of strong franchise opportunities.
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 33,500 Reads 7 Shares
A great customer experience matters. A lot. More than ever. Why? For one thing, because there are a lot of coffee chains in the world. Comedian Dennis Miller has a rant about how Starbucks has started opening Starbucks stores inside existing Starbucks stores. Well, it's funnier when he says it.
  • Jack Mackey
  • 4,902 Reads 1,014 Shares
Life was easier for a franchise sales person in 1987. There were fewer media, fewer regulations, and what prospects knew about your brand was mostly what you told them.
  • Steve Olson
  • 3,441 Reads
What is the most important buying decision you'll ever make? When you choose a new site? Buy category management software? Invest in a hot new concept? Does something else come to mind?
  • Mel Kleiman
  • 2,988 Reads
In 2005, Mike Scruggs, Sr., was senior vice president of global operations at Little Caesar Enterprises, Inc. in Detroit. A year later, he was a Little Caesars franchisee operating two stores with his wife, Deb, and his son, Mike II, in Colorado Springs. By April 2007, he'd opened his fifth restaurant. Today he has plans for more, lots more!
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 7,272 Reads 1,014 Shares
The evolution of franchising over the past 20 years has, of course, affected franchise executive recruitment. Executives at all levels are better educated today than they were in 1987, more sophisticated in their outlook and approach. The shift from founders to professional management teams, the effect of the Internet, the entrance of private equity, and new compensation schemes, taken together, have had a profound effect on the search business.
  • Lois Marshall
  • 3,609 Reads 22 Shares
I have a friend near my age who is fond of saying "We've outlived our time." That means the modern world seems ruder, faster, and more complicated than when we used to pick up the phone and tell the operator, "I'd like Forest 2729." We really did.
  • Ripley Hotch
  • 3,552 Reads 1,014 Shares
Originally printed in Area Developer Issue I 2007, the 2007 Mega 99 rankings highlight the Top 99 Multi-Unit Operates broken down by brands operated and by industry.
  • Area Developer Magazine
  • 6,555 Reads 1,023 Shares
Twenty years ago, when you wanted to know what was happening in your stores, you might have called in mystery shoppers. They would clock how quickly your front-line employees were greeting customers, whether your store displays followed the plan-o-gram, and whether your operations manual was in play.
  • Bill Fromm
  • 3,527 Reads 9 Shares
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