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Illinois Feature Articles

Informative articles to support business buyers, franchisees, and franchisors in Illinois.

One evening in 1982, Iris Cohn's husband, Dick, came home and told the family he wanted to open a Taco Bell restaurant in the Chicago area. So the couple took their daughter, Jennifer, to one of the restaurants, where they proceeded to order one of every item on the menu. "We were hooked," she recalls. Putting everything on the line, the Cohns became the first Taco Bell franchisees in the Chicago metro area, growing steadily over the years to become one of the brand's largest franchisees.
  • Debbie Selinsky
  • 9,494 Reads 2 Shares
As savvy franchise companies continue to flourish in a challenging economy, FUSR continues to bring you good news each month, highlighting brands that are adding units, increasing comp store sales, striking deals with investors, and continuing to grow. And, as the U.S. struggles through its "jobless recovery," growth-oriented franchisors continue to look overseas for expansion opportunities.
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 7,913 Reads 93 Shares
Multi-unit franchising is one thing. Multi-concept franchising is something else entirely. Nevertheless, it's a place--and a choice--that many franchisees love, and where they excel. These determined operators look for growth opportunities and potential across several concepts, sometimes in wildly different sectors. The multi-concept franchising model offers power in numbers (units, brands, territory, and income potential), as well as the security of spreading their risk across different concepts in a diversified portfolio.
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 8,080 Reads 1,023 Shares
The idea of operating a Taco Bell restaurant first came to Iris Cohn one evening in 1982. That's when her husband, Dick, came home and told the family he wanted to open a Taco Bell in the Chicago area. So the couple took their daughter, Jennifer, to one of the restaurants, where they proceeded to order one of every item on the menu. "We were hooked," she recalls. Putting everything on the line, the Cohns became the first Taco Bell franchisees in the Chicago metro area, growing steadily over the years to become one of the brand's largest franchisees.
  • Debbie Selinsky
  • 5,099 Reads 55 Shares
Retaining employees is an ongoing challenge for new franchisees -- and a key ingredient in building a successful business. After training employees to do their jobs well, the franchisee's goal is to retain them as productive, reliable workers. It costs much more to hire and train replacements than it does to work with current employees to improve their job performance.
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 23,121 Reads 1 Shares
As savvy franchise companies continue to flourish in this challenging economy, FUSR will continue to bring you good news each month, highlighting brands that are adding units, increasing comp store sales, striking deals with investors, and continuing to grow despite the economy - maybe even because of it. And, as the U.S. struggles through its "jobless recovery," growth-oriented franchisors continue to look overseas for expansion opportunities.
  • Franchise Update
  • 5,463 Reads 93 Shares
As savvy franchise companies continue to flourish in this challenging economy, FUSR will continue to bring you good news each month, highlighting brands that are adding units, increasing comp store sales, striking deals with investors, and continuing to grow despite the economy - maybe even because of it. And, as the U.S. struggles through its "jobless recovery," growth-oriented franchisors continue to look overseas for expansion opportunities.
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 8,210 Reads 93 Shares
As savvy franchise companies continue to flourish in this challenging economy, FUSR will continue to bring you good news each month, highlighting brands that are adding units, increasing comp store sales, striking deals with investors, and continuing to grow despite the economy - maybe even because of it. And, as the U.S. struggles through its "jobless recovery," growth-oriented franchisors continue to look overseas for expansion opportunities.
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 9,352 Reads 93 Shares
About two years ago, at the behest of a friend, Nick Vojnovic, president of Beef 'O' Brady's, made his first foray into a nontraditional franchise location, opening a restaurant at the TradeWinds, a resort in St. Petersburg, Fla., with 1 million annual visitors. It wasn't exactly on his radar, but Vojnovic decided to give it a go.
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 3,738 Reads 1,023 Shares
The franchise registration states require an updating of your FDD annually. This requirement necessitates the filing of a renewal application (including the revised FDD, current audited financial statements, and supplemental documents) with each registration state in which you plan to continue selling franchises.
  • Brian Schnell
  • 9,090 Reads 1,021 Shares
I have been a franchise lawyer my entire professional career. I still recall vividly my first project on my first day, September 8, 1987. International Dairy Queen had acquired Orange Julius of America (OJA) earlier that year, and we were updating the Orange Julius UFOC to enable OJA to continue to offer and sell franchises. We then also filed the revised UFOC in the various registration states.
  • Brian Schnell
  • 3,348 Reads 33 Shares
MY SALON Suite
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It was like a gut punch for Charlie Marshall. In less than a year's time, the Spring-Green Lawn Care multi-unit franchisee went from paying $12 per bag for lawn fertilizer to more than $25 per bag. "That will make you look for ways to streamline and cut costs," says Marshall. To add insult to injury, gasoline prices were skyrocketing, making it even more expensive to fire up his seven trucks and dispatch crews to care for his customers' lawns each day.
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 3,979 Reads 57 Shares
Most people would trade their day job anytime for Bob Stucker's problem a few years back: "I retired too young."
  • Kerry Pipes & Eddy Goldberg
  • 4,016 Reads 11 Shares
Conventional wisdom would say the best franchise operators are individuals with past business experience - or even better, previous franchising experience. But that may not be the case any longer. A youth movement is under way in the world of multiunit franchising.
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 5,011 Reads 98 Shares
Sit-down restaurants, also known as casual restaurants, have re-established themselves in the world of franchising - a world more often associated with such fast-food standards as McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, KFC, Taco Bell, and Subway, for example.
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 2,204 Reads 49 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
  • 4,084 Reads
Despite all of the attention recently focused on income taxes, it is the property tax that is the biggest expense in most businesses - and the most difficult to manage. According to the Council on State Taxation, a Washington, DC, think tank, American businesses shell out more on property taxes than for any other type of state or local taxes.
  • Mark E. Battersby
  • 2,810 Reads 4 Shares
At 17, Victor Chapron was just another boy in the 'hood facing one of three probable futures: drugs, jail, or death. Instead, he was rescued from his high-risk life in Los Angeles and sent to live with his aunt in Chicago. That's where he caught a break and turned his life around... maybe even saved it. Today, at 40 years old, he's come full circle. He's back in LA--this time at the top of his game.
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 7,574 Reads 105 Shares
They may not be the most visible, or even among the highest-paid executives in the company. But in the daily trenches of running a franchise system, chief operating officers, or COOs, are the go-to people for other executives, staff, and franchisees. Most come in early and stay late, taking only brief vacations and then doing so with cell phone in hand.
  • Debbie Selinsky
  • 5,754 Reads 1 Shares
Starbucks may have blown the coffee market wide open to mass consumption, but its competitors are quickly redefining how coffee is served-especially the speed at which it's delivered.
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 8,327 Reads 4 Shares
A healthy economy and a continued demand for both long- and short-term employees is driving personnel agencies and temporary employment services-and they love the work. Staffing services is one of the fastest-growing industries in the country. In 2004, the staffing industry generated more than $63 billion in revenues, with temporary staffing accounting for approximately 90 percent and permanent placement contributing the remainder.
  • 1,729 Reads 4 Shares
Smoothie King
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Barbara Moran had given up on the idea of ever heading up her father Dennis's company, Moran Industries. She'd wanted to be president, but was told that it wasn't in the cards because a woman in a male-dominated industry just wouldn't work for customers and franchisees.
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 3,385 Reads 1 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
  • 5,293 Reads 349 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
  • 2,950 Reads 9 Shares
I must be becoming a curmudgeon. In recent Viewpoint columns, I have taken potshots at the FTC and my fellow franchise lawyers. So far, the state franchise regulators have for some reason been below my radar screen. Why? Over the course of my...
  • Franchise Update
  • 4,266 Reads 7 Shares
I must be becoming a curmudgeon. In recent Viewpoint columns, I have taken potshots at the FTC and my fellow franchise lawyers. So far, the state franchise regulators have for some reason been below my radar screen. Why?
  • Rupert M. Barkoff
  • 2,951 Reads 9 Shares
Franchised businesses generate jobs for more than 18 million Americans and account for 9.5 percent of the private-sector economic output, a study released today by International Franchise Association Educational Foundation reported.
  • 2,196 Reads 6 Shares
When it comes to evaluating a potential area developer, don't marry for money, say franchisors. With money as a given, look for that indefinable "fit" and you're golden for the long haul.
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 4,103 Reads 187 Shares

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