INSIGHTS & ARTICLES

Franchise Readiness Begins Long Before the First Franchise Is Sold Last week I walked out of another client meeting with the same thought I've had many times over the years. The business owners who are most ready to franchise are usually the ones questioning whether they're ready at all. It's an interesting contradiction. The founders I'd just spent more than an hour with weren't asking how quickly they could sell franchises. They weren't asking how much they could charge for

Most people think being a franchisor means selling licences and collecting royalties. I've watched that misconception cost founders a fortune, because it treats franchising as an expansion tactic instead of what it actually is: leading a network. A franchisor isn't a landlord for intellectual property. A franchisor is the architect of an entire commercial ecosystem, and everything we do at Franchising Made Easy® starts from that distinction. Franchisees executing local market

The global pizza sector is entering 2026 with a clear message: Scale alone no longer guarantees stability. Major pizza brands are closing hundreds of underperforming restaurants, restructuring franchise networks and reassessing long-term growth strategies. While the headlines focus on store closures, the real story is about rising operating costs, changing consumer behaviour and franchise systems under pressure to adapt. Global pizza franchise closures in 2026 highlight ris

Franchise growth becomes sustainable when knowledge is embedded in systems rather than remaining dependent on a single founder. I was sitting in a franchise development workshop recently with a client who is preparing their business for expansion. We were discussing operations manuals, playbooks, training systems and the hundreds of moving parts that sit behind a scalable franchise network. At some point the conversation shifted towards AI, knowledge management and the gr

Everyone Expects The Wrong Thing Ask a business owner what a franchising audit covers and they'll say the same thing every time. Numbers. Compliance. Accountants with clipboards. That's not wrong. It's just incomplete. A pre-franchising audit is one of the first genuinely independent tests of whether your business deserves to recruit franchisees. It's not asking "does this business make money?" It's asking something closer to "would I hand this organisation hundreds of thousa

Business owners cannot control the economy, but they can strengthen their operations, leadership and customer experience. There’s an old saying in investing: “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second-best time is today.” I think exactly the same principle applies to business. In fact, I know. I joined Toyota Japan when the world economy slowed and a recession was threatening. Toyota didn’t fire everyone. We focussed on building efficiency into the supply

Let's play a little game. Imagine I handed you $200,000 in cash. Then I said, "You've got one chance to invest this wisely." Would you rush out tomorrow morning and put a deposit down for the first investment property you saw? Of course not. You'd do your homework. You'd look at the suburb. The numbers. The risks. The tenant demand. The long-term strategy. Yet every year I see business owners spend tens of thousands of dollars on franchising with far less preparation. Some

Over the years, I have sat across the table from founders from many different countries who share a similar ambition. They have built a successful business in their home market, someone in Australia has shown interest, and suddenly the possibility of international expansion feels real. Sometimes the business is a recognised American restaurant chain. Sometimes it is a European retail concept. More recently, I met with the owners of a successful hospitality brand that operat

Franchising doesn't fail on paper. It fails on the floor, in the rostering system, in the gap between what an enterprise agreement says and what actually happens on a Tuesday night shift. The Grill'd class action is the latest proof. What's happening: Gordon Legal, backed by the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees' Association (SDA), filed a Federal Court class action against Grill'd in December 2025. The claim covers more than 15,000 current and former employees who work

The introduction of the new Franchising Code of Conduct has brought several significant changes for Australian franchisors. While much of the industry has focused on disclosure requirements, dispute resolution reforms and restraint of trade provisions, another important area deserves closer attention: Specific purpose funds. Previously known as marketing funds, these funds now have a much broader scope under the Competition and Consumer (Industry Codes - Franchising) Regulati

For many retailers and franchise operators, pricing flexibility is critical to staying competitive in a difficult economic environment. Whether it is offering promotions, clearing old stock, matching competitors, or attracting customers during quieter periods, retailers rely on the ability to independently set prices that suit their business model. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has recently reinforced an important legal principle that every franchi

One of the questions I’m asked most often is: “Is my business ready for franchising?” Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes the answer is “not yet.” And occasionally, the most valuable advice we can give a business owner is to delay franchising until the foundations are stronger. That might sound disappointing at first. In reality, it is often the advice that saves founders hundreds of thousands of dollars, protects future franchisees, and dramatically improves the long-term

Why Bad Franchise Recruitment Is a Symptom, Not the Disease. When the ACCC and industry figures raise concerns about pressured franchise sales tactics and franchisees who don't understand what they're buying, the recruitment process gets the blame. It shouldn't. Poor recruitment behaviour is what happens when a franchisor never built a real system in the first place, and it's compounded by franchise recruiters who are paid to close deals, not to assess fit. Fix the system.

The Franchising Code Won't Fix Franchising. Here's What Will. The ACCC wants more transparency in franchise recruitment. Jim Penman wants mandatory, published franchisee satisfaction surveys. Both are right, and both are treating symptoms. The root cause of Australia's franchising problems isn't disclosure or reporting, it's that almost anyone can become a franchisor with no requirement to prove their business model actually works, and the consultants and lawyers who build th

Every recession produces two types of business owners. The first group spends the entire downturn waiting for conditions to improve. The second group quietly prepares for what happens next. History has an interesting habit of rewarding the second group. Whether it was the recession of the early 1990s, the Global Financial Crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, or today's prolonged cost-of-living squeeze, some of the strongest businesses emerged because they invested while others retr

Most founders believe franchising begins when they sell their first franchise. It doesn’t. Franchising begins when the business stops depending on the founder. And starts depending on systems. This moment is subtle. It doesn’t happen on launch day. It happens quietly, in conversations about technology, fit-outs, training systems, and operational structure. Because franchising is not about selling locations. It is about creating a machine that can create replicated franchised

Advertising doesn't create marketing. It amplifies the marketing system you've already built. Businesses don't grow because they advertise more. They grow because they build better marketing systems. Advertising simply turns up the volume. I was facilitating a strategic marketing workshop recently with one of our franchisor clients. Around the table were the founders, their marketing specialist, their technical marketing expert and me. On the surface, it looked like we were d

Franchising is one of the most powerful ways to expand a successful business. Many of the most recognisable brands in Australia and around the world have grown through franchising, using the investment and commitment of independent business owners to scale their networks. However, franchising is also widely misunderstood. Many founders assume franchising simply involves selling licences to operate under their brand. In reality, franchising requires building a replicable busin

Many businesses fear customer complaints. They see complaints as signs of failure. In franchising, that mindset can quietly damage the entire network. Complaints are not failures. They are signals. Signals that something in the customer experience can be improved. The most successful franchise systems understand this and build structured processes for capturing and learning from complaints. During my time at Jim’s Group, Australia’s biggest franchise system, there was one sta

Most Local Area Marketing Is Just Organised Guesswork Let’s be honest. Most businesses approach local area marketing like this: Run a promotion Sponsor a local event Boost a Facebook post Print some flyers Offer a discount Hope something sticks. Then they repeat the cycle next month with a slightly different version of the same idea. That is not strategy.