Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine 2013 Buyer's Guide | Page 6

MULTI-UNIT NEED TO KNOW Buyer’s Guide Multi-Mania F ranchisees are an optimistic lot, expansion-minded, on the grow, always alert to new opportunities. And for them, multi-unit franchising represents one of today’s most attractive opportunities. Whether it involves increasing the number of units of their current brand or adding new brands to their holdings, the allure of multi-unit franchising is attracting the best and brightest franchisees in the business with increasing frequency. During the past 20 years, what began as a trickle has become one of the hottest vehicles for building a business rapidly and sustaining it through the years. FRANdata puts the number of multi-unit operators at more than 34,000, and they control more than 155,000 franchised units in the U.S. Successful multi-unit operators are a different breed than the single-unit franchisees they are displacing. Light years beyond the old “buying a job” mentality, they are skilled, professional business executives who have chosen franchising as their business model. They possess the skills, training, capital, infrastructure, and vision to keep adding units to their portfolio—without stressing their organization or their stomach. Even during the recent economic upheaval, savvy multi-unit franchisees continued to expand, especially in QSR and in services such as senior care, hair salons, massage, home maintenance, children’s activities, pet care, and more. After all, if 4 1 MULTI-UNIT BUYER’S GUIDE 2013 MORE Franchisees than ever ARE ADDING New Units you can make money with one unit you can make even more with two, three, or more, right? Well, yes—but it takes a certain skill set, dedication, and infrastructure to make it all work effectively and efficiently. If you’re a regular reader of Multi-Unit Franchisee magazine, especially our ongoing profiles of successful multi-unit franchisees, you know exactly what we mean. All the right pieces must be in all the right places for a multi-unit franchise organization to succeed. If they’re not, the results can be disastrous for both franch \