Where to Find Good Franchise Business Opportunities
Recently I interviewed Flo Schell, Sales and Franchising Coach about the advantages and disadvantages of buying a franchise business.
After talking with Flo I got to thinking, if someone is interested in buying a franchise how do they find out what’s out there? So I phoned Flo to ask her about options for people interested in buying a franchise business.
As always, Flo was tremendously helpful. She explained that there are so many great franchising opportunities. Ones that came immediately to mind for her were Kabloom, which is a flower franchise, and Rocky Mountain Chocolate, which is a franchise chocolate shop. And of course, in Canada, Tim Horton’s coffee shop is a huge franchise.
Flo stressed that although there are many good food franchises (some of the biggies that you'll recognize are McDonalds, Wendy’s and Pizza Hut), franchise businesses are not limited to the food sector. Just about any service or product can be franchised if it’s something that the market wants.
And an important consideration is not to forget about local "home-grown" franchise businesses. I’m thinking of my favorite local coffee shop called Serious Coffee. This is a franchise that’s just on Vancouver Island where I live, so it’s in a fairly small geographic area. It’s not even province-wide or country-wide, never mind international.
But it started off about 10 years ago, one outlet down near Victoria and they have done things right. Because they ran that for about 7 or 8 years and got a really good reputation, and then they started franchising. Gradually you saw one open up in the next town and then the next town from that. And now, they’re up here in my town, and I love them.
Now, I don’t know if they’re ever planning to go outside of Vancouver Island but for right now they have about 8 or 10 franchises going and it seems that they’re just building it gradually.
So it’s a good idea to look around and see what is in your town or in the surrounding towns where you notice the same business in a few different locations. Would that give you a hint that that’s probably a franchise?
And you know those ceramic shops, where you go in and create your own ceramics and paint them? Those are probably franchised. There are lots of franchises in the children sector. For instance, a friend Flo's owns a company called Abracadoodle which brings art services into schools.
And you will be so excited if you go look at them because you will surely find a concept that you’re passionate about. And, Flo suggests to someone who’s looking to buy a franchise is to select a franchise that you really are excited about. A concept that is near to your heart. So, if you’re really interested in dogs you can look at the many pet franchises that are available.
Or if you’re really interested in helping kids, you can look at that sector and maybe you can offer children’s birthday parties or maybe you can offer after school care, or tutoring. You can see that there’s so much available, it’s really wonderful to select a franchise that not only fits with your passion but whose culture fits with your value system.
Books and websites to learn more about franchises
FranchiseGator.com and FranchiseHelp.com are two websites that you can take a look at that will just give you myriad ideas about the number and the types of franchises available.
And there are also some great books. So, if you were to go to your local bookstore in the magazine section you will typically find a soft cover book called Franchise Opportunities or Franchise Handbook which lists franchises according to categories.
So, for example, if you’re not interested in food but rather you’re interested in education you could go directly to the child services category and you can really get a feel for the kinds of opportunities available.
(Serious Coffee photo courtesy of CoffeeCrew.com)
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Thankyou for the honourable mention and being satisfied with our many products we offer at one of our 16 open Serious Coffee stores on Vancouver Island.We have secured another 12 sites which are allready under construction.Our products will only be available on Vancouver Island for now. Expansion plans are under review for the mainland and beyond.
Regards
Steve Brown
President,CEO
Serious Coffee Corporate Head Office
Love the Serious Coffee story here, Barbra, they were not open when I lived in Victoria. Thanks for the info - I have a great book on this topic called, ACHIEVING WEALTH THROUGH FRANCHISING, and it shows many details to back your post's insights. Great stuff!