Tampa Bay Business Journal: Why Checkers uses a different franchise model than McDonald's

Eric Snider of the Tampa Bay Business Journal recently sat down with Checkers CEO Rick Silva to discuss the company’s franchise model and how it differs from that of McDonald’s, which recently announced plans to sell back 3,500 corporate restaurants to franchisees.

While McDonald’s will now have around 90 percent of its stores owned by franchisees, Checkers plans to maintain its ratio of 43% corporate-owned stores.

In his interview with the Tampa Bay Business Journal, Silva was quoted as saying, “[Our approach] requires a high level of engagement. It’s very volatile, with minimum wage issues, food costs and the like. You’ve got to be in the pennies every day. If it moves by five pennies, you’ve got to know about it and react to it. Typically, franchisees do a better job of that. Large corporations tend to get a little numb [to those minor fluctuations] and may get complacent.”

In the end, it is Checkers’ combination of a more manageable number of units on top of their well-established systems that allow the brand to continue to operate more corporate-owned stores.

According to Silva, the brand has no plans to change their franchise-corporate ratio, as it continues to drive success.