Aicha Bascaro - The Franchise Fix

Aicha Bascaro

NEW YORK

LONDONNASHVILLEMELBOURNEVANCOUVER

The Franchise Fix

The Business Systems Needed to Capture the Power of Your Food Franchise

2018 Aicha Bascaro

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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ISBN 9781683507482 paperback

ISBN 9781683507499 eBook

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017913589

Cover and Interior Design by:

Chris Treccani

www.3dogcreative.net

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To Phillip, for asking the questions that inspired me to write this book. Thank you for trusting me to guide you in the right direction.

To my children, Zoe, Ali, and Avery, for giving up a lot of mom time throughout my career, which allowed me to acquire the knowledge and experience to be able to write this book. Because of you my life is complete.

To my husband, Glenn, for supporting me in my dream of writing this book and for giving me the freedom to choose what was right for me and our family. I love you!

A common refrain in franchising is, You are in business for yourself but not by yourself. While this statement is true, as the legendary late Paul Harvey would say, Here is the rest of the story. The reality is that franchising is a wonderful pathway to financial freedom and, when you purchase a franchise from a reputable brand, the chances of business success are much higher because the franchisor has proven the business model and has created a brand name with consumers. However, the purchase of a franchise does not automatically make you a business person.

Franchising encompasses close to 200 business sectors, including hotels, education, wellness, fitness, pet services, automotive services, and more. Among these, restaurants represent the largest segment and are perhaps the most complex of the business models. Typically, restaurants have very high volumes but low average tickets, which means high traffic count. Consider this: A medium sized hotel may have 100 rooms and, if 100% occupied (which is not typical), may see 100 customers in a day. A typical fast food restaurant would see 100 customers an hour! Lots of customers who want their food quickly, fresh, and with exceptional customer service. Its no wonder that restaurant workers are regarded as among the hardest-working people in business.

When purchasing a restaurant franchise, the franchisor will be diligent in providing brand-specific training to the franchisee and their key management. The franchisor wants each and every outlet of the brand to deliver a consistent level of servicewhich is the very definition of a brand. However, the franchisor cannot, within the usual 4 to 8 weeks of training, teach the franchisee to be a business person - that would be an unreasonable expectation. Hence, many first-time restaurant franchisees find themselves struggling to understand how to run their business. They learned how to make the products, how to serve the customers, how to maintain the facility, and other operational aspects of the brand in which they have invested. But they may not know how to build a culture, recruit and retain staff, manage their cash, and a myriad of other business functions. So, how would they learn that?

The Franchise Fix is a practical book sharing the decades of experience that Aicha Bascaro has accumulated from an impressive franchise restaurant career. She has been in the field, worked in the restaurants, counseled numerous franchisees, and consulted for some of the worlds top restaurant franchise brands. This book shares tips on how to manage the business of a food franchise. Food franchisees would do well to read this book as part of their educational process in becoming great operators.

Aziz Hashim

Multi-Unit/Multi Brand Franchisee

Founder & Managing Partner, NRD Capital

Chairman of the Board of Directors, International Franchise Association (IFA)

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

A BRAHAM L INCOLN

Sixty percent of restaurants fail in the first three years of operations. Paul, a real estate broker by trade whod recently bought his first food franchise, read this statistic on the Internet and his heart sank. He took a moment to take a breath and, as he was exhaling, he thought, I had no idea! He was doing research to find answers to his questions. He was a new franchisee and knew very little about the food industry. He figured that if he invested in a food franchise, he didnt need to figure out things on his own; that it would be easy. That the franchisor would give him everything he needed to run it and be successful. After all, so many were doing it, and he considered himself a pretty smart guy. How hard could it be, right?

Now that Paul had opened one location, he was starting to question whether hed made the right decision. Owning and running a franchise was not everything he thought it would be. As he was going through the franchise training, he realized that he wasnt getting everything he needed to run the business. There was a big chunk of things that were not included, and every time he asked about them, he was told, You take care of that on your own. He learned that the brand only provides the things that are directly related to executing the image, the product, and the service, but that there is no guidance on banking, managing staff, or even how to do local store marketing.

So, there he was, with turnover issues and a downward sales trend. Even though he was short-staffed, his labor cost was high and his food cost was going up and down every month. He needed helpfast!

Paul worried that hed made a mistake. What am I doing in an industry that I know nothing about?! He was a 20-year professional in the real estate business. He had done well, was respected, and had received several accolades in his industry. He could carry out real estate transactions in his sleep and, while that was almost boring, it was also stressful. He was looking for a place to put his savings that could be a secure investment and allow him to grow his money and eventually retire comfortably with his wife. Thats when purchasing a franchise came to mind. After doing a significant amount of research (obviously still not enough), he chose the brand in which he wanted to invest. He thought it was the answer to his prayers.

But after months of analyzing his problem, the more he researched, the more questions he had. A lot of them were about how to implement all that stuff in his franchise that the articles speak about and still manage to have time to sleep and eat. In the meantime, his stress level was increasing and he was losing sleep worrying about everything. His relationship with his wife and kids was suffering because he was distracted and irritable. He began to realize that he needed to do something before things got worse.