I hate to be redundant but what value is a franchise going to bring to this? I would suggest it will increase your build out cost on a branding that is marginally efficient at best, thus greatly decreasing your ROI (compare functional build out from an operational standpoint and atmosphere vs what many zors require and you will see my point, unless the brand drives revenue it is fool hardy IMNTBMFHO). For example, of national and regional brands that drives revenue respectively, consider McDonald?s and ?Oberweis? Ice Cream (these are not a recommendations, just an examples, one I these I would certainly not get involved with).
I started both ice cream and frozen custard businesses over the years and they met some people?s measure of success. Your advertising is getting a sample in the mouths of people along with a location they can access, simple as that, Work farmer's markets, socials, church gatherings, schools, malls, park districts, parks, political events, and sidewalks(to create awareness) and if your product is good you will get customers. I shut down for winter in the Midwest. My location was a converted house that was in a growing retail corridor and the other a fountain in a small town diner.
You can search around under my name as I mentioned this before, but their is a guy who runs a frozen yogurt shop in Boca Raton FL in the same plaza as Sweet Tomatoes who is very, very friendly and last I knew would pretty much train anyone who was not a jerk and wanted to roll their own and was out of state. My experience is most successful small business owners of their own start up concept are very generous in sharing their knowledge as long as you will not cut into their piece of pie.
Heck just a few weeks a go I took an 80 mile detour to visit a Ice Cream shop in Ohio that had a write up in a IL newspaper while on route to Philly (had to get a chicken cheese steak at my favorite hole in the wall). The owner was a friendly chap and would have willingly chatted the night away but I had to attend to other business so we only yarned on for an hour or two. A chap like that would not hesitate to teach you the business. Buy a ticket make the intro and then get a hotel in the area for a week and role up your sleeves.
Personally, except for fighting the winter thing I would not hesitate. This is an awesome business climate for high end, quality, start ups that indulge the taste buds in a economical fashion. People will spend money on small luxuries. As long as you are not burdened with a royalty on a plebeian concept that does not truly benefit from branding and you are not shouldering onerous build out costs you should be able to survive and thrive as you pick off the client base of those who were foolish enough to pay for a non-functional build out, an untenable lease arrangement, and royalty payments.
BTW, if you are not burdened with a franchise, it matters not if it is a fad, you are free to evolve or completely change to another concept. That is the beauty of being an indy operator: agility.
