Food: The Heart and Soul of Franchising T
by Christopher Connor
he food industry is what most people think of when they hear the term “franchise.” And that’s no coincidence. There are so many success stories in the food category that people often credit food franchising as an example of how well the franchise model can work. Legends have been born in the food franchise market in Ray Kroc, Colonel Sanders, Jimmy John Liautaud, as well as many others. It’s one of the few franchise systems, where franchisees can become multi-unit owners fairly quickly. Franchising has helped the food-service business enormously. This industry is one of the more difficult businesses to operate successfully thanks to the many moving
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parts: lots of staffing, face-to-face customer interactions, the sensitivity of both food and money. The integration of the franchise model seemed to do two things for the industry: First, it pushed the restaurateurs and entrepreneurs to streamline their business models, operating systems, and supply logistics to allow for scale. Secondly, franchising allowed food-service businesses to leverage the benefits of franchising to grow their brand into new markets and create scale. Franchising took one of the most unscalable businesses and turned it into a platform that could duplicate—effectively leverage buying discounts and compete with much larger organizations
