Raintree Wraps Up 2021 with a Whopping 140% Increase in Year-Over-Year Revenue

Franchise sales organization Raintree provides its partner brands with a complete solution to grow their franchise concepts by refining sales tools and recruiting the right types of franchise owners. Over the past year, the company has significantly altered its process in order to position clients for the best success, and as a result, has seen a whopping 140% increase in year-over-year revenue. Now, the Raintree team is gearing up for continued growth and is leveraging the lessons it has learned over the past year to take the firm to new heights in 2022.

“We’ve been doing this now for eight years, and we’ve started to see common ingredients that make a brand successful with us,” said CEO Brent Dowling. “We really tried to narrow our focus this year — we had 22 brands at our highest point in 2018, but we realized we were only interested in working with brands that we can help achieve hyper-growth moving forward. We reduced the number of brands we worked with by 60% this year, and that gave us the coverage to improve our franchise sales model, lead generation process and more.”

So what are some of the characteristics that Raintree is looking for in a partner? For one, Dowling says it is about having that infrastructure to support the firm’s growth strategy. 

“We want to be leaders in ethical franchise success, so we need to be able to say ‘no’ to potential franchise buyers and potential brands,” said Dowling. “We’ve had a lot of learnings over the last eight years, and we know how important it is for brands to have the ability to actually support the growth we will bring them. This includes having the right support infrastructure in place. It also includes a viable franchise development budget, for example. If you want us to help you sell 30 franchises annually, you should be willing to invest in growth.”

When it comes to the business model, Dowling says Raintree works with low-cost and high investment brands that can show an ROI in two or three years. Additionally, Dowling says Raintree likes to see at least 20% average net profit from the brands it works with. 

“It is important to have an economic package that will appeal to prospects, and a strong investment model allows us to build an attractive Item 19,” said Dowling. “Brands have to have a compelling story and make the path to success understandable for the right types of buyers.” 

Dowling says Raintree is also looking for clients who can hand over the reins and put total trust in their franchise development partner. “We want brands that are focused on getting franchisees open, profitable and happy,” he said. “We’ll trust you with the franchisees, but we only want to work with brands that trust us to build and execute the franchise growth strategy.” 

One of those ideal franchise partners Raintree added to its portfolio under this year’s new strategy is gourmet toast concept Toastique, and the results speak for themselves: the firm helped the brand sign 30 deals in the first year.

“It has been incredibly rewarding partnering with Toastique,” said Dowling. “As we get more selective with our partners, they are the perfect example of who we want to work with. They are young, driven, excited entrepreneurs who are learning what it is like to grow a franchise. They've perfected a business model so quickly, and we've been so impressed and thankful to team up with them.”

Now, coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dowling says Toastique’s impressive growth shows Raintree’s unique ability to take food franchises to the next level despite the challenges facing the industry.

“The common rhetoric is that food will no longer sell franchises,” said Dowling. “While Toastique is certainly not the same as home-based service concepts and prospects may have some hesitation, we understood the power of the business model. Our goal was to sign six franchise units by the end of the year, but we ended up selling 31. That is really a testament to the founders and the Raintree team’s ability to articulate the value proposition of how great the business model is, even in a pandemic environment.”

Brianna Keefe, founder and owner of Toastique, echoes Dowling’s sentiments about the partnership. 

“Raintree is best in class. They are very selective in who they take on as clients but once they do, you can feel their passion and commitment align with ours,” said Keefe. “The Raintree team completely immersed themselves into our brand to get a full understanding of our concept, mission and vision and where we want to grow. They have an innovative team with an expert from each department to design, market and promote our brand to the right people. We didn't have any franchises open before partnering with Raintree. Our initial goal was six deals signed the first year and we ended up signing 38. They overperform while maintaining the quality of our brand and finding the right partners to grow our brand.”

Overall, with the 140% increase in year-over-year sales, the firm’s new strategy proves to be a success, and Dowling says the team has no plans of slowing down now. Raintree is looking to add another eight franchise development players to the team to help the firm continue its upward trajectory in 2022.

“We’ve very carefully rebuilt our model, and now we want to scale. At a higher level, we also want to master the art of digital lead generation and spread the message of franchising to more and more people,” said Dowling. “Most brands rely on slower channels like inbound lead generation, portals and brokers, and our goal is to continue to develop and execute our ability to put franchise opportunities in front of people who aren't even looking for it. At the end of the day, we are looking to fortify our position as the leader in lead generation and franchise sales, and we’ve made significant progress towards that goal over the past year.”

To learn more about Raintree, visit https://raintreegrowth.com