Experts share insight on keeping franchisees happy| Restaurant Franchising & Innovation Summit 2021 | QSR Web

Getting a franchise system up and running involves partnering with good franchisees and, as the brand grows, keeping franchisees happy, engaged and committed to the brand strategy and philosophy.

And while it may seem easy — after all, franchisees want to make money just like the franchise owner — keeping franchisee partners happy requires work, consistent attention and a plan.

Several franchise brands shared insight on doing just that in a panel discussion at the recent Restaurant Franchising and Innovation Summit sponsored by Networld Media Group.

The event is one of several foodservice and technology industry events run by Networld Media Group. The next event is a virtual event, #QSRNext, which will take place Nov. 9.

The panel, “Keeping Your Franchisees Healthy, Happy and Organized,” which was moderated by Stacey Kane, a restaurant marketing consultant, was sponsored by Leasecake, which provides an operating system for location management.

Panelists included Brian Dixon, director of real estate at Team Oney, a Papa John’s, Starbucks and Qdoba franchisee; Brian Loescher, COO at Golden Chick; John Ramsay, vice president of franchise sales at Noodles & Company and Jim Thompson, vice president of operations at Chicken Salad Chick.

Connecting with the franchisee

At Golden Chick, the franchisor-franchisee relationship includes a “discovery day” where franchisees meet with all the brand’s department heads, are assigned a project manager to help them through all phases of construction and a director to assist them with staffing and training.

“We’ll assign a complete four-person training team for a new franchisee for seven days before opening and seven days after with training,” Loescher said.

Over at Chicken Salad Chick the goal is provide franchisees with as much information as possible, said Thompson, noting the “relationship” starts in the franchise sales process as the franchise development team establishes the relationship.

“Once we’re in new restaurant opening process, about 10 weeks out from store opening, they have access to shared information and a project manager is having a weekly call with (the) franchisee and then business consultants get involved six weeks out to make sure the people components are being done,” he said.

At Team Oney the brand taps Leasecake’s technology as franchisees will be using the tool. In fact, the brand is planning to embed the technology into future franchise agreements. The system, said Dixon, allows the brand to disseminate information at the same time the brand gets information.

“It’s intuitive communication with fast access to contacts and data and it really has transformed us,” he said, adding the technology has replaced previous tools such as Excel and paper-based documents.

“In the past I would take pictures of documents taped to an office to bring that info with me [to a franchisee]. It [Leasecake tool] just saves time and really lowers anxiety,” he said.

Noodles takes a similar data sharing approach, according to Ramsey, as the brand offers franchisees everything they need through one in-house system, from the POS to the back of house via iPads.

“They are all integrated and have two primary functions. One is the ‘binder’ which is the operations manual and then there is the app called Table which is the communication piece. Everyone that needs to know something has access,” he said.

Ensuring franchisee happiness

While the panel agreed on many points, a top one is that happy franchisees are those that make money and grow. So the key is giving franchisees what makes them happy.

At Golden Chick, happiness comes from higher sales and lower margins, said Loescher.

For Chicken Salad Chick franchisees it’s all about providing strong communication and sharing best practices among the franchisees and the brand.

“What they really want to hear is from each other and communicate with each other,” said Thompson, adding that in some cases franchisees are doing communication on their own, such as using group chats. The brand does a monthly call with the top leadership as well as top department leaders and share what’s going on within the various business units.

Noodles & Company is also focused on communication, according to Ramsay.

“We are doing intra-franchisee communication. We use a methodology of collecting the communication and put it out there and it’s all discussed. Ultimately the good ideas bubble up,” he said.

Some brands, including Noodles & Company, are also relying on annual or semi-annual corporate events to provide a place all franchisees can meet, talk and learn from each other.

“We’ve found there are three primary ways to communicate with the franchisees. One is regular business updates, which are very specific and focused on operating procedures, marketing plans. Number two is the franchisee advisory council where you get together with franchise leaders and senior management team and third is a conference that everyone comes to,” said Ramsay.

In fact, Golden Chick held a company conference just a week before the RFIS event.

“We’re just coming off that high and buzz so to speak. There has been a 40% improvement from where we’d been in 2019 so there were a lot of happy faces in the crowd,” said Loescher.

The bottom line, according to Team Oney’s Dixon, is that franchisees just want to be heard and listened to.

“You want to let them know that as everyone needs to feel heard. store managers want to know if they go to someone with a problem they’ll be listened to and the problem will be taken care of…not just brushed off.”