4-5 years ago I was in a similar spot. I looked for about 2 years and at first avoided franchises, but in the end the business that checked the most of my criteria happened to be one. Now I own 2. That's not to say it's perfect, just that the tradeoffs work for me. I decided if I was going to go the franchise route I'd better be prepared to follow the playbook, otherwise it's just a lot of cost, so tried to honestly answer if I thought I could drink enough koolaid for that particular brand or product.
If you're looking new, find out how many they are selling, how they're managing growth etc. They'll be excited to tell you their expansion plans, but if the same staff who rocked 10 openings last year now need to support 50, how much attention will you get? How many of the openings are corporate v franchised? Pluses and minuses to both but who will get their time and attention, and if there are no corporate locations are they building a brand or just churning out new location sales?
If existing, one thing I learned to be wary of is inventory. Small owners have crappy books. $100 of stuff on the books but sitting in the corner might be worth zero to you. the crappy books are an issue for financing too. You can almost count on it. Another thing you can count on is extra costs over the purchase price. There will be a transfer fee, improvements to get the place up to brand standards, onboarding costs etc that could easily be 30%.
Look closely at the US factor. If you need to buy a bunch of things out of the US exchange can sting and be material to what you make. At some point they'll let you talk to existing owners and it's great to learn how they got into it, what other options did they look at etc. Make sure there's a Canadian one.
I'm probably no more help than Google, but feel free to pm me.
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