Is It Really Easy to Buy a Franchise? What Does the Owner Have to Do in a Day?
A restaurant franchise is a business where you buy rights from the owner of a restaurant brand and open a new restaurant under the same brand with an agreement to operate the business in the format specified by the brand owner. A lot of people think buying a franchise just means buying a readymade business and operating it and that their job is only to manage it, because the franchise owner, or the “franchiser”, has already prepared everything for the franchise buyer, or “franchisee”. All they have to do is find the right location, build and decorate the restaurant and follow the manual. But is that really how it works? Today, MHA will raise some examples for you to see what franchise restaurant owners have to do each day.
1.Handling daily routines
The most important daily routine for a restaurant is generating sales for the restaurant, because sales are the restaurant’s main income. The restaurant owner has the job of generating as much sales as possible. Sales can increase due to several factors like delicious quality food, accessible ordering and distribution channels, satisfying promotions and employees who give good service with good
sales skills. The owner has to have sales strategies for boosting sales per head as well as marketing and advertising strategies to increase the number of customers for the restaurant. That’s not all, because good sales also come from good restaurant management to ensure that the business runs smoothly and continues to generate income. Thus, another important routine is restaurant administration and management. How do you administer or manage a restaurant? Read on to find out.
- Controlling the restaurant and checking the purchasing and stocking of ingredients This is essential because it’s a restaurant management aspect that ensures smooth restaurant operations.
∙ Every day you have to check the inventory and order ingredients in the right amounts. Don’t order so much that they spoil in storage, but you have to order enough for daily sales. ∙ Once you’ve ordered the ingredients and they’ve been delivered by your supplier, you have to check the products before accepting them. Always check to make sure that the product specs and quantity match your order.
∙ You have to neatly organize your stock by ingredient type. For example, meat needs to be frozen and fresh vegetables must not be stored at temperatures that are too low, etc. ∙ You have to control the budget for purchasing items for the restaurant. Check the daily sales and income to see if they’re consistent.
Even if you hire a restaurant manager to handle these tasks, don’t forget to double check everything yourself to prevent mistakes. Learn more about restaurant management at => All restaurant management articles.
- Build confidence for your team members and train your employees
Although with a lot of franchisers, the owner provides training for employees with an operations manual to study, the person who manages the work team in your restaurant is you. You are responsible for accepting applications and hiring employees. In addition, you have to train your employees in the best way you can, so they’re ready to work at your restaurant. At the same time, you have to create teamwork in your restaurant. You’ve got to give your employees incentive to work together by setting goals mainly for achieving restaurant success.
When there’s a conflict, you have to find a fair solution, boost morale and encourage your employees by using various methods, so the employees feel confident and want to work with you for a long time. Try learning about how to manage your employees for free in our online course => People Management in Restaurant Businesses
- Follow the franchise standards
This means the franchise business agreement. Practically all brand owners try to control all the branches, so their standards are uniform, since doing so has huge effects on the franchise image. If only one branch’s service management is so poor that customers avoid it, it might result in people not wanting to buy the franchise and the other branches might also suffer a decline. The franchise-related standards you have to follow are as follows:
– Food quality and flavor standards: In general, franchisers provide you with recipes to follow. Although you can make small changes according to customers’ orders, you need to add all the ingredients and use the methods taught by the franchise owners for both food and drinks. Furthermore, if you want to adapt or add a menu item, you need to ask for the franchiser’s permission in advance.
– Service standards: Other than having to train your own employees, some franchise owners will help with employee training or give you advice on how to teach employees about service, so the service standards for all branches are as similar as possible.
– Pricing and promotion standards: As with the food and service, the food prices depend on the franchise owner’s policies. However, some changes can be made if there are factors that affect pricing, such as when ingredient prices go up, etc. If there’s a price change or promotion, the rights holder will create a general franchise policy and notify each branch. You are responsible for keeping up with updates by the franchiser and the franchise.
– Other standards such as restaurant organization, decorations and so on: In general, the brand owner will have already provided you a manual to study and you are tasked with studying it until you understand and can follow the manual correctly.
- Get to know and understand local customers
Buying a franchise and opening it at a new location is a type of restaurant expansion that involves having other people take part in managing and owning the restaurant because you want to expand your market into other locations and establish new customer bases at the new branches. Even if the restaurant brand you want to buy has already done enough marketing to establish a name for itself, when it moves to a new location, it’s no different from opening a new restaurant unknown to the local people. In order to create good sales, a restaurant needs to be known and people should want to try it out.
As a result, it is essential for a restaurant to do local marketing. The restaurant owner needs to make the restaurant known to as many people as possible as soon as possible. Nowadays, people like to start doing marketing, even before the restaurant is open. The franchiser will help you promote your restaurant through online media, but the restaurant owners themselves also need to pay attention to this aspect. You could use some basic tools like putting up flyers to tell people about the grand opening promotions for your restaurant or you could create social media for the restaurant itself in advance. Learn more about this in our online course “Promote Restaurant Online for 10 Times Increase in Sales”, click.
After your restaurant opens, you have to keep doing marketing aimed at local customer groups and conduct surveys to learn about customer needs because customers in different locations have different needs. This way, you’ll have some information you can use to improve your restaurant’s services to meet the customers’ needs as much as possible.
In conclusion, at this point, it’s obvious that buying a franchise isn’t as easy as you might think, because the daily responsibilities are no different from those of a regular restaurant owner. However, a restaurant franchise is one business worth investment, because it comes with a readymade business
plan from the franchise owner who will give you consultations on how to operate the restaurant business in addition to providing you recipes and operational steps for you to learn. Many owners provide you with training before you actually start the business. This will give you more confidence in running your business. You can sell more easily because the brand’s marketing will help you. In addition, there’s a franchise network that will share information and help one another. You just have to study the information about the franchise you’re interested in well before deciding to buy one.
∙ Try learning about successful franchises from => Learn a Lesson from the Owner of Tiew Tun Mhor Fai Indy Who Failed 15 Times Before Creating a 100-Million-Baht Franchise! ∙ Or, learn about mistakes in running a franchise in => Why Did a Franchise You Thought Was Perfect Completely Failed; 5 Things You Need to Know Before Buying a Franchise
