Crain’s in Chicago published a great set of articles focusing on franchising. Here are the article titles:

IT’S ONE WAY TO BE YOUR OWN BOSS . . .
Want to be king?

MAKING IT WORK: DUNKIN’ DONUTS
The doughboy

THINK NUMBERS DON’T LIE? THINK AGAIN.
Is this franchise the real deal?

MAKING IT WORK: SUBWAY
Turning sandwiches into a bread maker

MAKING IT WORK: HELP-U-SELL
Keeping it real in real estate

BEWARE THE FRANCHISE GHOULS AND GOBLINS
Tales from the dark side

WANTED: SALES SKILL AND RESPECT FOR ELDERS
It’s good to be (franchise) queen

RESOURCES FOR YOUR LONG JOURNEY TO THE THRONE
Words to the wise

Check it out!

• Discount Real Estate franchises are booming
• Family ditches perfect life for pizza franchise, togetherness
• Discount Real Estate Broker Franchises
• Dairy Queen Remodeling Fight
• 10 Signs of Great Franchise

This British franchisor developed a vending style golf club cleaning machine. My initial reaction was that it was terrible concept for myriad of reasons, but I can see it possibly working as long as competitive pricing pressure is nearly nonexistent. It could provide low-end golf courses with a small but riskless alternative revenue stream.

The Sonic Golf Club Cleaning Machine cleans a full set of golf clubs in just two minutes. The Sonic can clean both the heads and grips of the club to an original condition. The grips are restored to a tacky finish and the grooves on the clubs face are clean thus improving the amount of ball control.

• Wal-Mart Realty?
• Another Curves Articles
• Why Franchising is Not Necessarily a Good Fit for Entrepreneurs
• Franchisor Reality Show
• Moms Fitness

A franchisee explaining why his wing joint is doing well:

“Everybody loves wings,” he said. “I think of the attributes that contributed to our success is the clean environment, good food, 14 different sauces, sports environment and casual atmosphere. I think a while back that what had a lot to do with it was the Atkins Diet. Chicken is very healthy.”

And another explanation:

He said wing-based eateries have thrived in the U.S. restaurant market because they provide an affordable product and operate at low cost.

“Obviously, it has a lot to do with the bottom line,” Wilkerson said. “They’re able to serve at a place with a small dining room and serve carry-out. They keep the menus limited, keep costs way down with little overhead and don’t have lots of waste like some restaurants do.”

Said Nicoloff: “It’s easy to inventory. You don’t have to have the equipment or time to train someone. It’s pretty simple to run.”

….”We have a full range of menu items other than chicken,” Tieber said, “but it’s 30 percent of our business.”

“I really don’t know how the wings took off,” Weisbrodt said. “It just seemed like one day we were doing some here and there, and now we’re doing them like you wouldn’t believe. Today, we can’t keep enough.”
…

“I think it’s reasonably priced meal,” he said. “Wings are good. They’re meaty. They can get just about any flavor. They come up with some original flavors. Our customers mix our flavors, and we have almost 60 different flavors right now. You can get in about any flavor. If you don’t like wings, we have many other things like hamburgers, hotdogs, pizza, sirloin steak sandwiches and fish, like walleye and cod.”

Smith has also noticed increased competition, especially from the larger franchises. Although franchises can get a better price for the product and buy in larger qualities, he believe small owners like him give consumers quality.

• Factors Affecting Profit
• Sports Bars Doing Well
• PR Through Surveys
• McDonald’s Snack Wraps a hit during off-peak hours
• The Hooters of Coffee

This is one of the better articles I’ve read recently giving readers an “inside look” at the franchising experience - what can go wrong, the competing dynamics and interests in the franchising business model, and financial and legal realities.

And that was just the beginning of Ross’s troubles. It seemed like her email account logged a new message almost every day, welcoming another Super Suppers franchisee to her region of the state while she was still struggling to attract new business. With neither the money nor the energy to advertise locally, she again turned to Super Suppers corporate headquarters for help.

While I’m sure the new franchises weren’t technically encroaching on her protected territory, it still has significant impact on sales.

Even if no more new Texas franchises were sold, she would still see many new locations pop up in the near future. Not to mention the “other guys” — Dream Dinners and Dinners Ready!, among others, were beginning to make multiple appearances around town. Unlike franchises that can thrive in heavily saturated markets (Starbucks, McDonald’s), a meal-assembly center needs a large number of households in any given territory to be successful. According to Bill Byrd, it takes 500-700 households to support a Super Suppers, but he concedes the divvying up of territories is “not an exact science.”

Whenever there is a “hot” segment, copycats franchisors are only months behind. Success breeds competition, and the competition can ride your wave and simultaneously learn from your mistakes without experiencing the costs. Potential franchisess must evaluate whether their soon-to-be franchisor will constantly innovate and improve to stay ahead of the competition.

For example, a less-experienced franchise owner wouldn’t know that regional and national advertising in a franchise-based business plan is usually rolled out well after a significant number of stores have been opened. “They usually try to pack a lot of franchise locations into an area before advertising so that they get some value,” says Letier. Bill Byrd says Super Suppers will begin advertising nationally at “around 1,000 franchises.” By this projection, franchisees have a long wait ahead of them. For the time being, Byrd says, “A lot of our [marketing] is to go in and talk to moms’ groups, PTAs, and church groups and tell them the story about Super Suppers.”

The franchise sales team or “independant consultant” didn’t highlight this for you? Oh yeah, they want to close the sale so they earn their commission.

Hat tip: Anonymous in the forum

• Celebrity Competition in Meal Prep & Assembly Franchises
• PR Through Surveys
• Another Entree into the Meal Assembly
• Top 10 of 2007
• Dream Dinners Hammered by Forbes