A founder shared an interesting situation recently. They’ve built a business model that works in one location, and someone has now asked about opening a franchise.

How early is too early to start franchising? What would you want to have proven before taking that step?

Franchising sounds great until you realise you’re basically creating another business to manage. If the processes are still living in the founder’s head, that’s probably the first thing to fix.

The franchisee is the interesting part for me. Why would someone hand over their savings to copy this model rather than just build their own thing?

There’s also a danger of making the numbers look better than they actually are. Once you include staff, rent, marketing, franchise fees and everything else, is there still a decent profit left for the person running the location?

I’ve seen businesses where the first shop is brilliant because the owner is there every day, knows every customer and catches every little problem. Take that person out and suddenly the whole thing feels very different.