Choosing Your Next Brand

But with a father who was a barber-turned-businessman and franchise owner, and a mother who was a stylist herself, they knew something about the hair business.

Providing employment advice through franchisees can be a tricky business-and very expensive if not done correctly. Amounts awarded in damages for employment cases brought against employers are on the rise. Damages recovered against employers in litigation brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) rose from $52.8 million in 2002 to $148.7 million in 2003. Damages received per case also increased from an average recovery of approximately $140,000 in 2002 to almost triple that amount-$390,000-in 2003.

Who ever forgets those early embarrassments? The careless and overheard remark in high school that gets repeated for months, the ticket for running a stoplight the day after you got your license-everyone knows those.

Area Developer asked Darrell Johnson, president and CEO of FRANdata, what a multi-unit developer should look for when evaluating franchise opportunities. In a wide-ranging interview, Johnson sorts out the massive amount of available information into four basic categories and provides a tutorial-and dozens of relevant questions-on how to think things through when searching for the best brand to suit your business (and personal) needs.

Brad Bruckman owned 15 Krispy Kreme franchises in the Northern California/Sacramento area when he felt a desire to reexamine his career direction. "I didn't necessarily foresee any of the problems that were soon to begin affecting that franchise, but I did begin to wonder about other opportunities, and, ultimately, I feel like I got out at just the right time," says the 42-year-old entrepreneur.

Jim Hagan was a successful salesman selling battery backups for communications systems when he got the idea to get into the restaurant business. It changed his life-though not quite in the way he expected.