Franchise Your Business
As franchise brands invest in training and support, feedback from owners can reveal whether those efforts are working and where franchisors need to make improvements.
Franchise brands spend enormous amounts of time measuring what customers think. They track reviews, transactions, loyalty, customer acquisition costs and countless other metrics designed to answer a fundamental question: Are we delivering the experience we promised? But there's another audience experiencing the brand every day: franchisees. In 2026, franchisee experience should be treated as a brand metric, and franchisors need ways to measure it.
Franchise Business Review's 2026 research illustrates why. Its study of 26,000 franchise owners across 330 brands found that 85% enjoyed being part of their franchise organization and 86% would recommend their franchise to others. But the research also identified marketing, innovation, technology, financial performance and franchisee involvement in decision-making among the areas where franchise systems most commonly struggled. In other words, saying you support franchisees isn't the same as knowing they feel supported.
At FSC Franchise Co., which supports restaurant brands including Beef 'O' Brady's, The Brass Tap and Newk's Eatery, franchisee support begins during development rather than after a restaurant opens.
“So our department at FSC, training isn't just about creating courses,” said Alan Rogers, vice president of organizational learning and development. “Our mantra for FSC is 100% franchisee success. Everything that we create, whether it's a course, workbook, guide or on-floor tool, is designed around making franchisees and operators successful.”
Depending on the owner's experience, that can include financial management education, operational guidance, webinars, personalized coaching and new partner training. FSC also provides assistance across site selection, restaurant design, construction and operational planning.
Franchisee experience begins when a candidate becomes an owner and continues through development, opening, growth and whatever challenges emerge along the way. Measuring that experience requires more than asking franchisees once a year whether they're generally satisfied.
Financial performance will always matter, but profitability alone doesn't explain whether the franchise relationship is healthy. Franchise Business Review's Franchisee Satisfaction Index evaluates franchisee sentiment across areas including training and support, systems and operations, executive leadership, core values, franchisee community, financial opportunity and overall satisfaction. Its methodology asks franchisees 33 benchmark questions, allowing brands to track results over time and compare them with broader franchise benchmarks.
That gives franchisors a much more detailed picture than a simple satisfaction score. Are new franchisees confident after training? Do owners believe leadership communicates effectively? Are technology investments actually making their businesses easier to operate? Do experienced operators feel differently from owners who joined two years ago?
Those questions can expose problems before they appear in more obvious metrics like closures, transfers or declining franchisee validation. They can also reveal a gap between what corporate believes it is delivering and what franchisees are actually experiencing. Franchise Business Review reports that franchisees typically rate their franchisor 25% to 30% lower than the franchisor expects.
Measurement only matters if the information leads somewhere. FSC's approach offers a useful example of how franchisee feedback can become infrastructure for the broader system.
Jim Keenan, director of franchise operations, recalled a franchisee who wanted to hire a dedicated marketing manager and event coordinator. Keenan outlined what he thought the position should entail and passed those notes to Rogers.
“Alan turned that into a complete hiring package — a job description, interview guide and even an Excel scorecard to measure success,” Keenan said. “That's how we operate. Whenever franchisees encounter something new, we build better tools that everyone else can use going forward.”
That is what a feedback loop should accomplish. One franchisee identifies friction. Corporate listens. The organization determines whether the issue is isolated or systemic. Then, when appropriate, the solution becomes part of the franchise system itself. Over time, the brand gets smarter because its franchisees are helping identify where the model can improve.
“The moment you think you've figured everything out, something changes,” Rogers said. “We're always asking ourselves how we can build a better system.”
Formal measurement matters, but franchisee experience can't be understood through an annual questionnaire alone. Franchise advisory councils, field visits, one-on-one coaching, support tickets, regional meetings and informal conversations can all provide different signals about the health of the relationship.
At FSC, the franchisee network itself is another feedback and support mechanism. Keenan said new owners are given contact information for experienced franchisees and encouraged to call them with questions.
“That's one of the biggest strengths of franchising,” he said. “You have peers who genuinely want to help.”
Modern franchisors should therefore think about franchisee experience through both quantitative and qualitative data. A satisfaction score can tell leadership where a problem may exist. Conversations can help explain why. The most important part is closing the loop. If franchisees repeatedly provide feedback but never see changes, the measurement process itself can become another source of frustration.
Modern franchise brands need to look beyond the number of training programs they offer, field visits they conduct or technology tools they provide. They should know whether those investments are working for franchisees.
That means measuring satisfaction at different points in the ownership journey and comparing the experiences of new owners with those of veterans. Franchisors should track recurring problems, create channels for candid feedback and determine whether franchisees trust leadership enough to recommend the opportunity. Just as importantly, owners should know what changed because they spoke up.
The goal is to understand the experience well enough to improve it.
“It's a true partnership,” Rogers said. “We're not successful unless our franchisees are successful. We're not here to police anyone. We're here to help build stronger businesses.”
Franchisees don't simply represent a franchise brand to the outside world. Their experience is one of the clearest measures of whether the brand is delivering what it promised.
Want to learn more about how 1851 helps franchisors grow their franchises with confidence? Visit www.1851growthclub.com and see what we can do for you.
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