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Multi-Unit Franchise Articles

Browse our selection of franchise articles and features to help further your knowledge in opening and operating a franchise business. Our exclusive features cover the , , , , , , and site of the franchise business. Written by the editorial team that produces Franchise Update Magazine and Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine, the franchise industries premier magazines.

When looking at a franchise opportunity, the big question often asked is 'how much can I make?' Coming up with those projections isn't always easy. It takes a little digging on your part. Even so, most area developers have enough experience and are wise enough to know how to find the best franchise opportunities that will reap a good return on investment (ROI).
  • Joan Szabo
  • 13,852 Reads 3 Shares
It's every multi-unit operator's nightmare: You have a solid group of healthy performing units until you notice one beginning to decline - lower sales numbers, declining traffic, increased customer complaints, unusually high employee turnover. Or maybe you decide to take on a new unit that has been a low performer. It can be a difficult situation, but it can also provide an opportunity filled with high returns if handled properly. Here are some approaches, tips and insight to what some area developers have done to turn around poor performing units.
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 3,514 Reads 47 Shares
In my previous column, I discussed the first two pieces of how to build an organization that grows your franchise business. Part one was planning the structure of your organization over time, based on your territory, market, or development growth in terms of your team. Part two focused on the functional role of individuals within the organization. The third piece is how to develop pools of talent.
  • Thom Winninger
  • 3,514 Reads 11 Shares
The difference between satisfied customers and loyal customers can sink a multi-unit franchisee. But there is also good news here.
  • Jack Mackey
  • 4,342 Reads 3 Shares
It's all her son's fault! Twenty-eight years ago, says Alice Schleicher (pronounced "Slisher"), her then 16-year-old, Rick, came home and said, "'Mom and Dad, I saw a restaurant and I want to buy it.'" It was a KFC in Sellersburg, Indiana. "We kind of looked at each other and said, 'Okay, well, we'll buy it.'" She envisioned having four someday. So far, she's exceeded that by 50.
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 9,911 Reads 1 Shares
"Today you can work anywhere," says John Metz from his home in Buffalo, where he spends three months a year--the winter months. "It's a wonderful thing. I dial in to my office in West Palm Beach through a VPN and get everything I want. I can dial into the POS systems and get real-time information on all my restaurants. What else do I need? It's just like being in West Palm." Except for the snow.
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 14,842 Reads 2 Shares
It's a family affair all the way around at United States Beef Corp. Founded in 1969 when Bob and Connie Davis purchased their first Arby's restaurant – just five years after brothers Forrest and Leroy Raffel opened the first Arby's in Boardman, Ohio – today the Tulsa-based franchisee is headed by their sons Jeff, CEO, and John R. Davis, president. And a focus on a family-type atmosphere in its restaurants completes the picture.
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 6,462 Reads 349 Shares
Gina Mehr has experienced success; now she wants to be effective.
  • Linda Ray
  • 4,667 Reads 1,014 Shares
Clara Osterhage says she is "the employer of choice in Dayton, Ohio." "I treat them the way I want to be treated and I pay them weekly," she says. "I could cut costs in half by paying every other week, but I know how important it is to them. It's a huge recruitment benefit. I have people who will never leave me."
  • Linda Ray
  • 8,046 Reads 274 Shares
Tom Hofer has always been tuned into his own drive and sense of where he belonged. "I did real well in a retail environment after college, but I always knew it wasn't me," Hofer says. "I definitely knew I wanted to own my own business, but wasn't sure what to do. So when the opportunity came up for me to buy a territory with Spring Green, it felt right."
  • Linda Ray
  • 3,842 Reads 9 Shares
Linda Fong loves franchising. Not only does she own three Liberty Fitness locations, but one Fast Signs franchise and a Phlato's Closet store. "I can grow the other businesses by increasing sales," Fong says. "I'm opening more fitness locations because that's how I can grow that business."
  • Linda Ray
  • 4,411 Reads
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Todd Watkins may look like a type-A power franchisee with 22 Martinizing locations and the title of largest franchisee in the system. But the 41-year-old Michigan father has other priorities.
  • Linda Ray
  • 4,907 Reads 25 Shares
Charles Loflin has won Wingstop franchise's awards for highest sales in 2004 and 2005. Last year, he had a million-dollar store. In 2006, he'll have two.
  • Debbie Selinsky
  • 10,093 Reads 2 Shares
In 1992, after 25 years in the high-tech industry, Bill Criego opted to start his own company as a franchisee for Batteries Plus in the Minneapolis area. By 1995, he'd drafted wife Laurie, a sales manager in a consulting services firm, to join him in the business. By 2003, son Michael, a former airline pilot, decided to come aboard and help run the operations for the stores, which now number ten. (They'll open the 11th in a couple of months and plan others in the future.)
  • Debbie Selinsky
  • 5,524 Reads
When Randy Lawrence's entrepreneurial spirit led him to leave his post as vice president of corporate operations for Back Yard Burgers to open his own restaurants, he did it with a vengeance: he signed a seven-year development agreement to open a whopping 28 Back Yard Burgers in the metropolitan Atlanta area.
  • Debbie Selinsky
  • 4,032 Reads 12 Shares
Junior high sweethearts and now 17 years married, Jan and Mark Mansfield have pooled their skills to achieve great success with 39 Sport Clips salons in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area.
  • Debbie Selinsky
  • 5,845 Reads 95 Shares
More than 26 years ago, North Carolinians Tommy and Donna Haddock bought their first Bojangles' franchise. Things worked out so well, with him taking care of store operations and her working on insurance, workers comp and other "bureaucratic red tape," that they've never felt the need to try another franchise organization.
  • Debbie Selinsky
  • 7,152 Reads 1 Shares
For a man who values family so highly, Jeff Rogers has accomplished a lot in the world of business and franchising. He's been at the top of his class in advertising, winning numerous awards; a turnaround specialist advising troubled companies (more awards); and has taken the helm at more than one struggling franchise company, where he worked his magic to transform a loser into a winner (yes, more awards, including 1997 Turnaround Entrepreneur of the Year from Inc. magazine, IBM, and Deloitte.)
  • Debbie Selinsky
  • 6,834 Reads 6 Shares
Multi-unit, multi-brand franchising has achieved a milestone: More franchises are owned by multi-unit developers than by single-unit franchisees. So we thought you'd like to know how big some of these guys are. Area Developer magazine introduces this annual feature, profiling some of the industry's most successful multi-unit franchisees. Working with FRANdata to compile a list of the largest multi-unit franchisees, "The Big 99" (ranked by number of units), rest assured our editors also know that when it comes to franchising, size isn't everything.
  • Eddy Goldberg, Linda Ray & Deb Selinski
  • 4,223 Reads 1 Shares
You wouldn't know it from looking at his photo, or at his remarkable string of successes in taking failing chicken franchises and giving them wings, but Aslam Khan grew up poor. "I was born in poverty," said Khan in a 2001 interview, "and had a deep desire to move away from it. I wanted to do better."
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 10,792 Reads
Customer satisfaction data must correlate to comp sales growth. Otherwise, there is no reason to worry about providing great service--if there is no positive financial result from that effort. Without financial linkage to business results, there is no external validity to the customer satisfaction measurements and you are probably measuring "satisfaction"incorrectly. Let's look at a proven method of measuring your customer's experience that gives you clear financial linkage to comp sales growth.
  • Jack Mackey
  • 3,317 Reads 1 Shares
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Whether you are a franchisor or a multiunit franchisee, you must have noticed that the marketing and sales landscape is changing. No matter what kind of business you're in, status quo marketing and sellingis no longer going to get you the resultsyou need or want. In a business-to-consumer franchise system you will see the demographic changes in your customer marketplaces more quickly than in business-to-business. Time to wake up and smell the demographic coffee!
  • Mauricio Velasquez
  • 3,969 Reads
I have read many "How To" articles on real estate. Often, they were written by attorneys, estate agents, or learned Ivy League professors in need of publishing. They quote facts, point to figures, refer to charts, and on occasion come up with something of value to the reader. The problem, in all fairness to these authors, is that it is difficult to write about real estate without a clear and specific idea of what their readers need or are looking for.
  • Lewis Gelmon
  • 3,649 Reads 20 Shares
Before he even served his first sandwich, Bill Duke signed a contract with an outside human resource organization to handle all his personnel issues. And after one successful year as a single-store franchise owner, Duke is pleased with his decision.
  • Linda C. Ray
  • 3,710 Reads 17 Shares
The most powerful players in franchising will meet in March for the nation's only conference dedicated to the industry's fastest-growing and most targeted audience - multi-unit franchise developers.
  • 2,284 Reads 35 Shares
The best way to ensure profitable sales growth is to keep building an ever-increasing base of loyal customers. Customer research consistently proves that "loyal" customers are worth much more than merely "satisfied" customers. Only "highly satisfied" customers become loyal customers. They buy more often; they spend more per transaction, and they drive new customers your way with positive word-of-mouth advertising.
  • 2,980 Reads 3 Shares
Much has been made of the benefits of web-based technology as it applies to the franchise corporate office and how it can easily and effectively collect financial data from its franchisees.
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 3,349 Reads 3 Shares
"It's personalities that makeany business," says ZaneTankel, and he shouldknow. He's owned a number ofthem, starting withcommercial printing. Now he'schairman and chief executiveofficer of Apple-Metro, Inc.,the sole franchisor in the NewYork metropolitan area ofApplebee's and Chevys.
  • Ripley Hotch
  • 4,416 Reads 35 Shares
Many area developers are under tight time pressure to open new units. Often, area developers will agree to growth provisions in their franchise agreements that can be unrealistic to all but the most sophisticated operators. Franchisors will, of course, prefer to grant territorial rights to those who promise rapid growth. Once you have been awarded those rights, you may have the best intentions and plans to meet your growth requirements, but you may discover early on that it takes much longer than expected to open each store. The realization sets in early with most that they stand to breach their franchise agreement’s growth requirements and find themselves struggling to catch up. Like a swimmer who panics, a lot of splashing occurs but little in the way of real movement happens.
  • Jeremy Behar
  • 3,232 Reads
When doing business in Australia, you may hear the expression "fair dinkum" as in "Mate, are you fair dinkum?" This is an old and popular bit of slang that Australians use to assure themselves that others are being honest, genuine, and reliable in their dealings with them. It challenges any real or suspected evidence of phoniness, deception or manipulation.
  • Franchise Update Magazine
  • 3,121 Reads 1 Shares
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