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Syracuse resident Dean Panos is a franchise veteran. From running 10 McDonald&rsquo;s with his father to recently signing a five-unit deal with <a href="https://blinkfranchising.com/?utm_source=1851franchise.com&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=how-blink-fitness-franchise-development-website-impacts-prospective-franchisees-2706881" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration-line:none" target="_blank">Blink Fitness</a>, he is all about &ldquo;feel&rdquo; when it comes big business decisions. 1851 recently sat down with Dean to learn more about his decision-making process when it came to teaming up with Blink Fitness. 

1851: What made you initially attracted to Blink Fitness?

Panos: The franchise business is all I know. I came from the hotel side of the industry right out of college and then came back home to work for my father who owned several McDonald&rsquo;s since the 1960&rsquo;s. And that&rsquo;s what I did for the next 20-plus years. We had 10 McDonald&rsquo;s open at our peak, but then took a buyout from McDonald&rsquo;s corporation in 2012 at the point when we had eight. 

At that point, I relaxed and enjoyed the fruits of our labor. I had no intention to get back into the franchise business anytime soon. I&rsquo;m a big reader, and I&rsquo;m active and like to stay healthy. As I was reading&nbsp;The Wall Street Journal, I had read an article that was actually on Planet Fitness. I like to read between the lines, not just the headline. I caught a little blurb at the end of the article, and it was talking about Blink Fitness in NYC. I was immediately attracted to the name. It was unique and had some buzz to it. So, I made my way to a Blink gym in Clifton, and immediately after stepping in the gym, I knew things were firing on all cylinders. It was something that was &ldquo;me.&rdquo; It reminded me of everything that a successful restaurant was, but in a gym. The cleanliness popped right away, and that was a big factor. The pillars we had at McDonald&rsquo;s&ndash;quality, service, cleanliness, value &ndash; I saw all those pillars in Blink. 

1851: What parts of Blink made you decide to buy it?

Panos: My big thing is seeing who is running the business. I want to meet the people directly responsible &ndash; the executive team, the leaders, the decision-makers. I got together with a group in New York and got a real fundamental understanding of who was running the organization, where it came from and how it was put together. That was really the thing that sold me. Blink has a solid management team from the top down. At that point, I signed a five-unit development agreement, and our first location will be open in October. 

1851: When researching Blink, how important was the website in helping educate you about the opportunity?

Panos: I referred to the website, which was helpful in its own way. It gave me a little insight. But it can only give me so much. It guided me in the right direction. But I&rsquo;m a different kind of guy with a different story. I&rsquo;m typically a guy that likes to see it with my own eyes and feel it in my gut. While the website was a good starting point, being in the gym and meeting the management team is what sold me. 

1851: How did you perform due diligence on the brand?

Panos: Like I said, if I see it with my own eyes and feel it in my gut I know pretty much the story is going to work out to be a good one. There are other people who are number crunchers who just want to look at balance sheets and P&amp;Ls; they want to see everything and analyze everything left and right and up and down. I&rsquo;m more of a hands-on person &ndash; what I see and consumer habits normally drive my insight and lead me in the right direction. 

I did do the basic stuff, like simple pro formas&nbsp;and looking at the FDD. But other than a few back and forths with management, and getting a basic understanding of the model, I knew they were on to something. I come from the value business. I come from the people that invented the value business, McDonald&rsquo;s. The intrigue with Blink, even though it was a gym and a step away from food, is that it&rsquo;s still a value-oriented business. Very rarely have I seen solid value propositions in business fail &mdash; if you can manage it right. &nbsp;

1851: How do you absorb content/media today? 

Panos: I&rsquo;m not a huge social media guy. I look at social sites but not really much for gaining information. I&rsquo;m a big reader of online content. I do comb a lot of the major digital publications. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times are my go-tos. You gain an immense amount of knowledge when you really read articles in search of the answer. The answer might not be in the headline, but inside of the article there&rsquo;s a lot of embedded things that you can pull out. That&rsquo;s how you really learn

How Blink Fitness’ Franchise Development Website Impacts Prospective Franchisees

1851 Franchise

From hotel management to McDonald’s and now Blink Fitness, multi-unit franchisee Dean Panos explains why he chose to invest in the hot value brand Blink Fitness

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