Just out of curiosity, I’m interested in understanding the experience of running a franchise as an “owner” of the location. I have no intention or desire to run one myself, yet I find it interesting. From the outside, it seems like a weird relationship in which you are the owner and not at the same time. You own the location, but mostly everything major is decided and dictated by the franchise company. So, what’s it like?
-
How do you view your relationship with the franchise and your employees?
-
What do you label and describe your position as?
-
What are your responsibilities?
-
What is it like to manage your employees?
-
What are the benefits of running it?
-
What are the downsides?
-
Is it a lucrative investment?
-
Was it hard to get into and start up? Were there any major barriers initially?
-
It is easy once you get used to it, or is it a lot of work?
-
If you suddenly didn’t have the franchise, would you try to start it again?
-
Anything else I might not have thought to ask?
I’ve worked for both individual owners and corporate owners, and it really really depends on the franchise. Chick-Fil-A is like owning a money printer as an individual owner. Pizza Hut is nearly impossible for even a large company to run profitably.
My last job was with the largest operator of both Pizza Hut and Wendy’s in the US, they filed for bankruptcy two months after I quit because Pizza Hut was such a loss that even the Wendy’s profits could not cover the losses.
I currently work with a bunch of CFA operators and no one owns more than two stores and they all seem to do quite well for themselves while paying their employees pretty damn good wages.
Worth noting that CFA is notoriously difficult to franchise with. They’re extremely selective on what types of people that they’ll enter into franchise contracts with. And they’re extremely choosy about locations, because they do everything in their power to avoid over-saturating a particular market. They’d rather have one extremely busy location, instead of two locations nearby that both struggle. Basically, unless you’re a rich white Republican christian man with a trophy tradwife, you have near zero chance of getting franchise rights with CFA.
On the bright side, once you get your foot in the door, you’re pretty much set for life. It only costs a relatively small up-front buy-in to prove that you’re committed. Then CFA will build the location for you, and ensure the new location gets up and running smoothly.
Thanks for sharing! Why do you think Pizza Huts are doing so poorly, and do you think that Pizza Hut in general will be going out of business anytime soon?