Checklist: How to Purchase a Franchise
| If you’d like to own a restaurant, but don’t know where to start or don’t have great recipes or business acumen, or don’t want to risk too much and waste your investment, we have to tell you that a franchise business is a great solution for you.
However, although franchise businesses look like a good shortcut, you have to be careful about the franchises you buy, because franchising is about more than buying recipes or brands as many people understand it to be. In fact, it’s buying the entire management system. Therefore, you need to give thorough consideration to the purchase before deciding to buy a franchise.
The following is a checklist on what kind of franchise you should buy:
1. It Offers Popular Products & is Suitable for Your Chosen Location |
It would probably be very tiring for you if you threw your investment in a restaurant that you thing is it a good location but nobody visits it. That can happen if the menu items offered at the restaurant are not popular in the market or basically not what the people around in the neighborhood enjoy. Therefore, it’s necessary for you to make sure that the franchise that you’re going to buy offers products that are popular in the market and they are suitable for the location in which you’re opening it. For example, if you are opening a store in a school area, the people who pass by are naturally going to be students, teachers and parents, so the products or food that you sell should be things that these customers want and at reasonable prices.
| 2. Franchises are Reputable and Widely Accepted
Restaurant brands that can clearly prove that customers constantly visit them and that the foods and services they offer are great can be called reputable and accepted. Customers will definitely choose these brands over relatively obscure ones. Moreover, these brands are easier to expand upon. For example, when you create new menu items, more people will want to try them out because these brands are already credible. When you plan to buy a franchise, you should choose a franchise that’s reputable and not just on the provincial or local level but also on the national level. Otherwise, your prospects for opening restaurants might be too constricted.
3. Franchise Brands are Marketed |
In today’s highly competitive business environment, good franchises should regularly market their brands; in addition to helping their brands survive in the market, they also help every franchise owner experience better sales and business expansion. Therefore, you should choose a franchise that has marketing plans for its brand and doesn’t just sell you the franchise.
| 4. Franchises Have Clear Work Standards
One of the main problems in opening a restaurant is work systems. For example, how do you arrange your restaurant? What software do you use to take orders? How many service staffers do you need for all your tables? How much time is needed for taking orders and serving customers? And how do you control recipes and control your restaurant according to your guidelines? If the system is bad, the entire restaurant will malfunction, sometimes to the point of making it impossible to do business.
In order to minimize these headachy issues, you should choose a franchise that has clear work standards, recipes, management procedures and detailed and step-by-step work procedures.
5. Franchises Have a Training System for Franchise Buyers Normally, there are lots of trials and errors when opening a new restaurant; lots of unplanned problems occur, so the franchise you choose should have a training system in place. This training system should cover food preparation, customer service, problem handling and restaurant management. These things should be readily taught to franchise buyers, and franchise buyers should be able to ask questions any time. In this way, you won’t have to worry about trial-and-error in everything you do or waste lots of time and energy without reasonable cause.
6. Franchises Have a Franchise Standard Inspection System A big problem of restaurants that have many branches is that damage caused by one branch such as bad or inconsistent flavors, bad services or frequent mistakes can impact the reputation of the entire brand. The problem could impact all other restaurant branches and harm all franchise buyers. Therefore, the franchise you choose should have a standard inspection system for every branch in order to maintain brand standards and reputation.
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All of these six items form a checklist that isn’t difficult to use, but can help you immensely. You will be able to choose your franchise business better and less likely to get tricked or waste your investment without cause. So, try and apply the checklist.
