Food Feature Articles

Jett Mehta knew early in his life that franchising would be a good fit for him. "I grew up in the business," says Mehta. "My dad is a Ponderosa franchisee and was the largest franchisee in the country at one point. He was investing in multi-family real estate and got into the restaurant business in the '80s. When I finished school I hooked up with him." It wasn't long before Mehta drew up some ambitious plans of his own. First came a motel deal, and then the food industry beckoned.

Las Vegas was the backdrop for the 2009 Multi-Unit Franchising Conference, held in mid-April at the fabulous Bellagio hotel, where multi-unit high rollers were searching for sure bets at the "Playing 2 Win" themed-event, sponsored by Franchise Update Media Group.

Many franchisors are taking advantage of this economic slowdown to examine and improve their sales process. Rather than discussing tweaking and fine-tuning, I'd like to look at three fundamental selling skills essential to franchise sales success. You'll recruit new franchisees much faster if you train (and re-train) your sales staff in these three key selling skills.

It all began with a single Golden Corral restaurant in 1997. In just over a dozen years, Guillermo Perales has grown to operate 142 franchise locations, spread across 5 brands throughout Texas and Florida. It's quite an accomplishment for this native of Mexico, and he's not even close to finished. "I'd like to double the size of my business over the next decade," says Perales. Based on his track record, it's a good bet he'll succeed. He just inked a deal with T-Mobile for some new units, and he's negotiating with a yogurt and seafood franchisor--and that doesn't even include his planned hotel project in Dallas.

Pizza Fusion, a growing chain of organic pizza restaurants, was born from three passions shared by co-founders Vaughan Lazar and Michael Gordon: food, healthy eating, and the environment.

Franchise Update Media Group (FUMG), the leading industry resource for franchise development, reports that for the first time, multi-unit franchises are the new industry majority, providing growth opportunities in these times of economic uncertainty.

Charles Loflin started climbing the ladder of success from the bottom rung, and he hasn't stopped yet. "I've been in food and beverage all my life, starting when I was washing dishes at the age of 15," says the 40-year-old multi-brand franchisee.

At the end of January, following the headlines of optimism and encouragement that came with the presidential inauguration, came the harsh reality of job layoffs and plant closings in one company after another across the country. Home Depot announced 7,000 layoffs, Pfizer trimmed 19,000 jobs, and Caterpillar 20,000. In total, nearly 60,000 wage earners became unemployed, and while many enjoyed reasonable severance packages others were most certainly caught unprepared for the income loss that will follow.

With 324 Subways in Oklahoma and Kansas, Don Rottinghaus knows his brand and his market. Must be time for something new. "I work those areas constantly," he says. He has to. Over the past 20 years, the multi-unit franchisee has built a huge chain of Subway locations in the region. And now he's taking on a new challenge, bringing a taste of Southern California sunshine to the Midwest. Over the next 5 years, Rottinghaus will develop 12 new LA Sunset Tan locations in Oklahoma and 25 in Kansas.

As a student at Florida State University, the entrepreneurial spirit in Sam Osborne led him to own and operate a small personal training business. One of his clients was David Walker, who was soon to be a co-founder of Tropical Smoothie Café. Things have "worked out" well for both.

Once you've examined yourself and considered the broker question, it's time to take the next step. Now you want to look at the various industries and sectors that are attractive and - hopefully - a good match for your skill set. Making a List make a short list of the kinds of industries you're interested in - food service, senior care, home repair, etc. Review the players, the competition, and any regional strengths and weaknesses for the industries you're considering. Older, more established brands may look safe and solid but could be less flexible to deal with. Likewise, newer brands may be big on innovation, but could be short of cash, or worse, struggling financially. Evaluate your risks carefully.

It's no surprise that multi-concept franchising continues to soar. So much so, that for a second consecutive year, we have devoted an issue of Multi-Unit Franchisee to covering it in detail. This high-flying approach to expansion is growing in popularity for a multitude of reasons. As a growth strategy it offers more units, brands, territory, and income--while spreading risk across the different concepts in a franchisee company's portfolio. Multi-concept operators typically have a solid infrastructure in place that, among other things, allows them to hire and retain talented individuals by providing growth paths within the organization. And of course there's the leverage of economies of scale in this type of operation.

Everyone knows what the McDonald's logo looks like and what the "Golden Arches" represent. No matter where you go in the world, if you set foot inside a McDonald's you can order a Big Mac or Quarter Pounder and know exactly what it's going to taste like. Established brand awareness, reliability, and uniformity are part of the power of franchising.

You'd think selling franchises in one of the worst economies since the Great Depression would daunt even the hardiest franchisor. But many franchisors, both well-established and new to the scene, keep on plugging when the economy goes south. Some even consider this a great time to grow.

Many franchisors have reached their limit on expanding into suburbia, but the imperative to grow remains strong. In response, an increasing number are training their sights on America's cities.The move to the suburbs has been a decades-long trend in the United States, and franchisors have followed suit. But more than half of the U.S. population live in the country's top 25 metropolitan areas, and nearly 80 percent live in the top 100 metro areas.Cities are complex, crowded places, running the gamut from blighted ghettos to luxury high-rises. Suburban commuters flood into them by the millions each day to work and shop, creating a vibrant marketplace. And the under-served inner cities are hungry for retail goods and services, jobs, and entrepreneurial opportunity, making them fertile ground for franchisors who take the time to learn, understand, and develop relationships with the people who live there.The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC), founded in 1994 by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter, studies inner cities with a focus on economic development. According to ICIC, "[T]he inner city retail market offers significant profit potential for retail companies now operating in the highly competitive, over-saturated suburban markets." According to an ICIC study, the country's inner cities contain:

Greg Hamer, Sr. grew up working in his father's Louisiana oilfield service business. But in 1982, he began to put time and money into growing a franchise business that has since grown to 50 locations.

I have a suggestion that will raise your odds of winning--and it won't cost you any money. To clarify what I mean by improving your probability of winning, let me contrast that with an example of winning by chance.

It was like a gut punch for Charlie Marshall. In less than a year's time, the Spring-Green Lawn Care multi-unit franchisee went from paying $12 per bag for lawn fertilizer to more than $25 per bag. "That will make you look for ways to streamline and cut costs," says Marshall. To add insult to injury, gasoline prices were skyrocketing, making it even more expensive to fire up his seven trucks and dispatch crews to care for his customers' lawns each day.

About 20 years ago, Greg Cutchall learned a crucial lesson. An investor group he worked with forced him out of a chain of KFC restaurants in Omaha, units he had operated and helped to build. That fired him up to make things happen for himself.

All franchisors place a high priority on gaining new recruits and responding to contacts from prospective franchisees. But who's setting the pace on performance? Once again, Franchise UPDATE's mystery shoppers hit the phones--and the websites--checking out franchisors from coast to coast to see which were doing the very best work. The best and the brightest were recognized in the 10th annual STAR (Speaking To And Responding) Awards--from the three top national performers to the companies that excelled at fielding telephone contacts or quickly getting back to website leads.

Reciprocity Restaurant Group President Lyndon Johnson good-naturedly lets new acquaintances have a little fun with his name. That's because he's fine with his name. "I can think of a lot worse people to share a name with," says Johnson.

Retailers have never been shy about enticing customers to buy through all kinds of incentives. Now a franchisor has followed suit. During the last quarter of 2008, Seattle-based Emerald City Smoothie was offering a "buy one, get one free" franchise promotion. Seriously.

FRANCHISE OWNERS are awfully smug these days. While dismayed stockholders watch the red figures crawl on the ticker tape, entrepreneurs behind food kiosks and restaurant chains boast of maintaining control over their investments and even growing their businesses in these tough times.

As a marketing expert for a string of fast food chains, Bill Welter learned his craft under "three wonderful kingmakers" of the franchising world: Ray Kroc, Colonel Harland Sanders, and Dave Thomas. But it wasn't until Welter got inside the four walls of his own restaurant that he understood the true nature of the business and the keys to its success.

That statement from Franchise Update Media Group Publisher Steve Olson got the attention of more than 300 industry leaders at this year's Franchise Update Leadership & Development Conference, as he presented an overview of the results of the 2009 Annual Franchise Development Report (AFDR).

Lisa Flynn, a mother of two young boys, never relished having her children photographed. For her, birth announcements and holiday portraits meant either spending a small fortune for a professional photographer who didn't cater to colicky clientele or settling for cheesy props and fuzzy blue backdrops at the mall portrait studio.

In our previous column, we covered the first two elements of security and loss prevention when setting up a new business: site selection and employee screening. This issue we look at alarm systems.

Anil Yadav knows what it's like to work his way to the top of the food chain. In 1984, he was a fry cook at a California Jack in the Box, a part-time job intended to help pay his expenses while attending college. Within 18 months he was manager, and after five years had bought his own restaurant. He never quite finished that engineering degree, but today he owns and operates 78 Jack in the Box locations, along with 16 Denny's restaurants.

Seventy-year-old Kelly White waited a long time before exploring the world of franchising. In fact, he came out of retirement at age 66 to open his HoneyBaked Ham store in Silverdale, Wash. "Retirement was just too boring for us," says White, referring to himself and his wife Sue. Together they manage the store and a staff of eight part-time and full-time employees. White's hands-on style and love of running the business have served him well. That's probably because he founded and operated his own construction company for 25 years, much of that while concurrently running an apple orchard.

Only 7 percent of respondents to Franchise Update's Annual Franchise Development Report said they are exceeding their 2008 goals. Another twenty-one percent said they were meeting their goals. 72 percent of those responding said they were falling below their sales goals for the year.