---
title: "Tampa Bay Business Journal: Why Checkers uses a different franchise model than McDonald's"
url: https://burnaze.com/article/141993ae-296d-4463-91bd-a8788a1bded7
source: "1851 Franchise"
original_url: https://1851franchise.com/tampa-bay-business-journal-why-checkers-uses-a-different-franchise-model-than-mcdonalds-1695
category: "Burger"
industry: "Restaurants"
segment: "Burger"
topics: ["Finance & M&A"]
published: 2015-05-22T19:14:02.000Z
modified: 2026-11-01T04:16:14.872Z
image: https://newimage.1851franchise.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=85,format=webp,width=1280,height=720/story/featureImage/8d777f385d3dfec8815d20f7496026dc6155.jpeg
---

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

**TL;DR:** Checkers CEO Rick Silva discusses the company's franchise model, which differs from McDonald's, with a focus on maintaining high engagement with franchisees. Checkers plans to maintain its ratio of 43% corporate-owned stores, unlike McDonald's which will have around 90% of its stores owned by franchisees.

*originally published in 1851 Franchise on 2015-05-22. [Read the original](https://1851franchise.com/tampa-bay-business-journal-why-checkers-uses-a-different-franchise-model-than-mcdonalds-1695).*

## Story

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.

## Entities

- 1851 Franchise (publication)
- Restaurants (sector)
- McDonald's (company)
- franchise model (topic)
- Checkers (company)
- franchisee engagement (topic)
- corporate ownership (topic)
- Tampa Bay Business Journal (regulator)

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Originally reported by 1851 Franchise (https://1851franchise.com/tampa-bay-business-journal-why-checkers-uses-a-different-franchise-model-than-mcdonalds-1695). Summarized by Burnaze (https://burnaze.com/article/141993ae-296d-4463-91bd-a8788a1bded7).