Franchisee resource center

Many of the franchisees we talked with had to make a decision first on whether they would open an independent business or a franchised one. A few of their stories follow.

One critical factor to consider when you are thinking about opening a franchise is whether your location is suited for a franchise and which franchise suits your area the best. One thing that makes this consideration slightly easier is the notion of franchise territories. Most, but not all, franchises in the US are set up so that they grant exclusive territorial franchise rights to their franchisees to help prevent the issue of geographic competition.

Whether you’re purchasing a whopper from Burger King or joining the Burger King franchise system, the old mantra holds true: there’s no such thing as a free lunch. When you first get started running a franchise you need to pay a fee to allow you to enter into that franchise. These fees are the largest fees that you will normally pay a franchisor and typically range between $5,000 and $1,000,000 depending on the franchise. The franchisor charges this fee as a way to recoup the costs of expanding the franchise and to continue to grow. From a franchisee perspective, this is a major outlay and can take a long time to make back, but is a necessary step. Aspiring business owners must understand how much capital is available to them so they can ascertain how much they can afford. The cash you have at your disposal is known as liquidity, and there are numerous ways to increase your liquidity above the balance in your bank account. As a result, many people don’t realize how much capital they actually can use for investments, like launching a franchise branch. We’ll run through some of those methods below.

History has shown that a struggling economy encourages entrepreneurship, which leads to a significant increase in new start-up businesses. But what if you are a hard-working professional with limited business knowledge and resources? You are motivated and more than willing to do the work, but you need a roadmap to guide your efforts. In that case, franchising may be a good option for you.

Many of the characteristics of the perfect franchisee are shared by both a franchisee and a franchisor, but there are also some slight differences. A franchisor is more concerned with how an individual franchisee will fit into their business as a whole, and not necessarily how the single franchise will operate on a day to day basis (although that’s still important to them). Meanwhile the franchisee cares almost exclusively about the success of that individual.

The franchise agreement should spell out all initial and continuing training obligations of the franchisor in detail. You should also query the franchisor about the following:

The U.S. Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics recently con­ducted a survey of home-based businesses and estimated that there are just over four million self-employed, home-based workers. (The number of franchised businesses in this total was not calculated.) However, the National Association of Home-Based Businesses, in Owings Mills, MD, puts the number at closer to 50 million people. Whatever the accurate number is, it is a number that everyone agrees will only continue to rise.

There are basically two types of businesses that can be offered by an individual. They can offer Products to their customers which are tangible goods meant for the customer's consumption or they can offer them Services which are intangible and work to make the life of the consumer easier and more convenient. With technologies advancing rapidly and the global demands of consumers changing there is a very thin line dividing the service and product segment of the consumers demands. An example of this can be the purchase of a car from an auto dealer. The dealer not only offers the vehicle at a competitive rate but now has to offer different services as well, such as financing options, after-sales services, ready documentation and other non- tangible services. This kind of merging has made it very difficult to draw a clear line as to the service and product industry but for the sake of argument we will consider a theoretical perspective where you have to choose a traditional product franchise or a service franchise.

At its core the decision to open a franchise isn’t a trivial decision. You are making a serious investment, but if you take all of the factors into account it can be an amazing one. But before you get there you need to sit down, analyze your needs, capabilities and limitations in relation to a franchise business. This could take a few days to consider or a few weeks or months. In either case, it is one of the most important steps in the franchising process, so don’t skip it.