“How Are You Supporting Franchisees” with 12 Brand Leaders

Over the last six months, we’ve interviewed some of the franchise industry’s biggest established and rising names. Each time we spoke with a brand founder or development leader, we asked the same question: “How are you setting franchisees up for success? What does great franchisee support look like to you?”

As we’ve explored this topic with leaders from diverse segments of the franchising industry, a few key themes have emerged. Moving forward, we’ll explore the top three things franchisors are doing to support their owner-operators while providing concrete examples of how both leading and emerging brands are approaching franchisee support in the current environment.

Franchisee support models

“To me, the idea of losing someone else’s money and going out of business is terrible. That’s why we’re very particular about markets and demographics. We’ve taken years to figure out the delivery system and rework everything to maintain profitability… We’ve developed our menu thoughtfully in a way where we feel like we have a really good offering now. We can configure our standard ingredients into 83 different concepts.” – Brandon Gawthorp (Co-Founder, Urban Bird Hot Chicken)

“Our cafes operate using a one-shift model, which I think has two distinct advantages. First of all, everybody’s able to focus on getting great at what we do best. At the same time, though, we’re also creating work-life balance for our franchisees and their employees. Some restaurant concepts are open 12, 15, or even 24 hours. With Another Broken Egg, you can dedicate your undivided attention to having success at breakfast and brunch and still have time for a family life.” – Jorge Salvat (CEO, Another Broken Egg Cafe)

“ Everytable’s a pretty interesting franchise model as far as that we sell scratch-cooked meals, but for our franchisees, there’s absolutely no cooking. All of the cooking is done at the single central kitchen. And so, because of that, it’s a really accessible franchise opportunity.

Folks don’t need to know how to run a five-million-dollar restaurant space, they don’t have to invest the capital to build out a kitchen, and they don’t have to cook food on a daily basis. That means the labor is low, and the operations are really simple. The build-out cost is really inexpensive… The shop is basically a small box that’s easy to operate, and all these different revenue channels flow through it – and in the direction of the franchisee.”

“We’re a very focused QSR brand. We sell, really, two products. We sell tuna and salmon.

And that is eighty percent of our sales. Eighty percent of our sales is just two products, and we try to make the business very simple. But what that means is we have to be focused heavily on the supply chain for those products.

I own my own supply chain. I own distribution. We have our own freezers.

We have our own drivers and trucks, and we service all our franchise locations and corporate stores directly. That helps us with our margin. We’re able to undercut Sysco and US Foods and a lot of the bigger guys because we have our own integrated supply chain.

So, our mission then creates the margins.”

“From a franchising perspective, I look at the senior care space as being like the restaurant business. Everybody needs food, and that creates opportunity. People may see senior care as a saturated market, but it’s absolutely not.

If you look at the statistics, national franchises still don’t have the majority of the market share across the U.S. It’s still predominantly independent agencies – local folks.

What franchising does do in our space is legitimizes and formalizes the services in a way that creates more predictable outcomes for the client. That gives people more security, which is really important to the decision-making process when it comes to someone coming into the home to take care of Mom or Dad. So, when people see a name like Comfort Keepers, they can see that it’s a brand with an established reputation all over the place but also run by a local owner-operator in their community.”

Real partnership standards

“Support has to mean something real. A lot of franchise systems describe support in terms of the basics: a manual, a training program or launch marketing. Those things matter, and we provide them, but the support that determines whether a franchisee thrives long term is what happens after opening, especially in the hard moments.

When something breaks, a coach leaves, a competitor opens nearby or a franchisee needs help solving a local challenge, that is when real partnership shows up. That is the standard we hold ourselves to. Our franchisees are in business for themselves, but not by themselves.”

“Right now, at Sportball, if you were a franchisee and just joined, not only would you get all of the playbooks for business development and marketing and hiring and training, we have an online learning management system called Acorn, where every one of our franchisees and coaches around the world can dial in, and they can see how a class is delivered. They can hear what it sounds like. They can see what it looks like.

They get all the manuals, the workshops. We also have a growth coach that works together literally week after week with our franchisees to make sure that they’re moving the needle in the ways that they need to, whether it’s, revenue-driven calls or hiring and training calls or business development. The growth coach helps the franchisees stay grounded, stay focused on their business plan, and then hopefully hit their targets.”

“We actually do a white glove service that runs from when a new franchisee signs the franchise agreement until after they’re open. We help you with site selection. I fly out to every single location with the franchisee.

As an owner/founder I want to be a part of making sure your first location, and all your locations are successful, but especially your first. Number two is we help you with lease negotiations. We review the lease with you, review the LOIs.

We have a dedicated project manager to help you with restaurant design, construction guidance, and equipment purchasing. And we have a team of trainers that’ll fly out for a month to train your whole team. We’re there for a whole month before you open, during the soft opening process, and after your grand opening to make sure that your entire team is trained to spec.

We also provide ongoing coaching. In the beginning, it’s weekly meetings, then monthly, and then quarterly meetings with our account executives to go over KPIs, COGS, marketing incentives, and so on. It’s a white glove service all the way through.”

“We look at a new franchisee’s experience as a pie with three parts. There’s the skill and trade knowledge you need to know to do the job, there’s the sales and marketing aspect of running the business, and then there’s the decision-maker slice of the pie – the entrepreneur part, where you’re the boss. We assess any prospective franchisee through these three lenses and immediately try to understand where they’re strongest and where they need the most support.

During my twelve-month coaching window with franchisees, I schedule calls with them every two weeks and actively try to push them to grow and think about crisis management and how they’ll overcome those obstacles. It’s a very customized approach. I spend a lot of time getting to know them as individuals so I can understand what holds them back at each individual step of the process.

Maybe if they’re a corporate refugee, they need to work on that final decision piece. On the other hand, if someone’s a more experienced entrepreneur, the conversation becomes more about alignment between the business portfolio and your life goals. Some people need help selling what they do and who they are to build trust.”

“At SOLENVIA, we believe that the training element, having people who are trained to recognize dementia/Alzheimer’s behaviors and responses, is beneficial — not only to the caregiver but also for the clients and their families… We’ve launched a Certified Dementia Practitioner training initiative at the ground level, so it will be baked into our system from this point forward. We also have the ability to create the training and really develop it as time goes on and the system grows. We can take in new ideas, process new information, and evolve in whatever ways we feel are best to deliver great services.

I think that’s one of the unique differentiators that we have at SOLENVIA: we’re actively working to set a standard.”

“We’re very proud of our video training platform. That’s something thing we took from our experience with Wingstop. Right now, [Co-Founder] Chantel [Fiaschetti] is focused on working with the operations team to create a complete training platform that will have a checklist for every station and include every step that it takes to train somebody, from cooking fries to being a district manager.

Our goal is to build a platform where there are systems in place to train and enable and support as well as systems that hold managers accountable for using and enforcing the systems.”

“Another thing we’ve learned over the last two years is that it’s crucial to provide great training. We do our on-site training at our Allentown, PA headquarters, and then franchisees have virtual follow-ups via Teams. We’ve developed a cadence where they come here, do the initial training, drive off with the equipment, and then do their first event with a trainer on site. That ensures their first event goes well and they feel really well-supported.” – Mike Quilty (CEO, Wild Bill’s Craft Beverage Co.)

“As an emerging franchisor, there is a learning curve. Our franchisees right now are providing a ton of feedback, and I’m listening to all the things that they don’t love to do. And as an operator myself, I also know the things that I don’t like to do. So, how do we conquer that? That is something that I’m really passionate about. How do we build backend systems that can alleviate some of the pain and, again, provide a solution at scale?” – Marina Mentzel (Founder, urSwim)

Franchisee success strategies

“Outside of four people, including myself, who work in franchise development, our organization is now 100% focused on franchisee support. On top of that, our regional directors and field ops teams have been strengthened with the addition of some of the people who previously worked in company ops locations, who have real-world experience running these businesses day in and day out. They’ve had to fill shifts. They’ve had to recruit caregivers. That’s extremely valuable to our franchisees.” – Scott Oaks (VP of Franchise Development, Comfort Keepers)

“We have great franchisees, so our goal there is to provide a cadence of ready-to-execute activations that drive local traffic and conversion. We have toolkits they can use and campaigns they can run, so there’s no need to build from scratch every time. They don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

We also just launched our first ever Flavor Experience, which is our new platform dedicated to limited time specials and fan favorites. And then there’s our DoorDash partnership, which is going to improve the experience on our website and allow us to have a native app. We’re also currently rolling out a new unified guest experience management system, a GEM.

It’s going to consolidate customer reviews, feedback, surveys into one platform for monitoring guest sentiment. Unifying all those systems into one platform is going to significantly simplify things for franchisees.”

“We have a full marketing team that works really closely with our franchisees so that franchisees have all of the marketing assets that they need for social media and LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. They don’t have to reinvent the wheel. They can just make sure that it’s market-specific. They can take our template, make sure that it’s market-specific, and then they can post those.” – Jason D’Rocha (Vice President, Sportball)

“One practice we’ve been working on since we became a franchisor is really qualifying leads, taking some of those administrative duties so we can put the right customer in front of our operators and set them up to have great conversations with the customers, build those relationships, and make sure those kids (or adults) are learning what they want to learn.” – Marina Mentzel (Founder, urSwim)

“We recently hired one of our long-time franchisees’ daughters, who’s been with us since she was 14, to serve as our Franchisee Success Manager. She works with franchisees on route building because it’s really essential not to waste your time at bad events. Jasmine can help franchisees understand where the opportunities lie in their territories or steer them away from bad deals or events where they won’t be set up for success.” – Mike Quilty (CEO, Wild Bill’s Craft Beverage Co.)

“We’re in the Bay Area, so we’re very technology focused. Every single system is very integrated into the development and the operations of the store. That means up-to-the-minute web app online ordering systems, integrated payroll, checklist systems, and cost management systems.

We have an app for ordering through our vendors as well as our central warehouse. We want to make sure that the franchisees have the tools to operate the store without having to go into like the swamp… And then we also help with marketing, purchasing, and supply chain, business reviews, and more. We have all that integrated.”