Franchisee Resource Center

If you served in our nation's military, you've acquired a unique and valuable set of personal strengths. These aren't always easy to explain in a traditional job application or resume, but they spell success when it comes to running your own business.

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.

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 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.

Most of you are probably already familiar with franchises. You may even patronize a variety of franchised businesses without realising that they are franchises. These businesses range from car servicing and financial services to yogurt and home repairs. According to the International Franchise Association(IFA) franchises employed nearly 9,000,000 Americans in 2015 and generated nearly $880 billion. Franchising is difficult to escape.

Owning your own business has always been a linchpin of the American Dream. With the advent of franchising, prospective owners now face a choice between running an independent business and operating their business unit as part of a franchise system. Put differently, they can launch a brand new restaurant churning out specialty cakes and ice cream sundaes, or open a Cold Stone Creamery location. Determining the right option for you comes with some complexities, but there are a couple of primary factors to consider: Your risk tolerance and your personality type.

Here at FranchiseHelp we’re constantly asked about the opportunity to buy a franchise. Unfortunately I’m going to have to tell you something that might disappoint you. You can’t “buy” a franchise. In reality you are engaging in a “leasing” transaction rather than a “purchasing” transaction. Why is it a lease? In any franchise deal, the franchisee receives the assets up front, but only for a period of time - the term of the franchise agreement. The term of the agreement may run for five to ten years, or in some cases it may run for as little as a year or two. At the end of the day the renewals of these agreements are at the option of the franchisor, and the reasons for not renewing an agreement should be completely spelled out in the Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) and franchise agreement.