FranDev Players: Ryan Zink, CEO, Franchise FastLane

Ryan Zink knows about growing franchises. 

As the manager of 15 GNC nutrition stores, he helped run the top five revenue-producing stores in the country. He went on to help start up, and then sell, a wholesale business. Next, he co-founded Complete Nutrition brand, which grew to a network of 200 retail stores, before selling that to private equity.

Now, he’s out to help franchisors achieve the success he’s experienced through his Omaha-based company Franchise FastLane. He calls his organization a “gas pedal” that helps brands accelerate franchise growth. “I like to say we represent the next big thing,” he says.

His company awarded over 1,000 franchise units this year alone, so we asked him his thoughts on the keys to achieving growth for franchisors.

1851 Franchise: Tell me a little bit about your firm, Franchise FastLane.

Ryan Zink: We are a full-service outsourced franchise development company. So franchisors that would prefer to outsource their development rather than build the internal team come to us. We figure out the process, the technology, the marketing strategies, and build the relationships inside broker networks. If they prefer just to sort of fast forward that or jump in the fast lane, if you will, we work with them. 

1851: Who are your clients?

Zink: We speak to over 150 franchisors a year and will typically bring on five to 10. We have really strict criteria for brands that we'll work with. We call it our Necessity List. A brand has to check the box of every necessity we look for in order for us to represent them.

1851: How did you get interested in franchising?

Zink: I sort of fell into it. I got a degree in broadcast journalism and decided I didn't want to move away from Omaha to a small town to do J.V. basketball on the radio. So a friend of mine was working in a franchise GNC location and had some success. The franchisee and I got along really well, and I managed all his stores. We had the top five GNC locations in the country.

Then we became a supplier. We had a company called NDS Nutrition, where we were supplying nutritional products to GNC franchisees. We eventually grew that and sold that to a private equity firm.

Then we started a nutrition retail store, Complete Nutrition, in 2005, which we grew to over 200 locations. In December of 2015, we sold that to a private equity group. After the sale, I only knew two things: I knew nutrition, and I knew franchise development. I couldn't do anything in nutrition any longer because of a non-compete. So I decided to start Franchise FastLane, which is designed to help emerging brands do exactly what we did with Complete Nutrition, which is to find great franchise partners and ultimately grow it into something that is a national brand. 

1851: What are the keys to consistent franchise growth? 

Zink: There's a lot of them, but if you just want to simplify it, what it is about is: having profitable, happy franchisees and open territory. If you have franchisees that are singing your praises, they're making money, they want to grow themselves and you have open territory around the country. Those are the types of opportunities other people want to get into. There are a lot of industry-specific things you can think of, but I think you can boil it down to happy profitable franchises and open territory. 

1851: What are the biggest hurdles to successful franchise growth?

Zink: I think it all starts with attention. Then it's really going to come down to whether you have a proven model and the funds to grow that proven model and support your franchisees.

Attention is so hard to get in a world where everybody else is trying to grab people's attention. Just take franchising alone, where you have 4,000 franchise opportunities out there. If you're an established brand, and you've been able to build those relationships over time, it's not as challenging. If you're an emerging brand, trying to figure out what is the right place to market to get attention, which portals work the best and which broker networks are the ones that you're going to find some good partners with. That’s just the very front end of it. So think about what your business does that’s going to capture some people's attention. 

I think another hurdle, of course, is just access to capital. There's no lack of business opportunities. We speak to 150 franchisors every year and each one of them, in their own way, has something compelling about the business. But many times, we just can't represent them because they're either too young or they don't have enough happy franchisees and data in their past to talk about profitability. We look at the amount of working capital that we have, and we just say you don't have the required resources to be able to support the type of growth that we typically bring. 

1851: How has COVID affected franchise growth opportunities?

Zink: I think the obvious one is that the concepts that require people to go into an establishment have taken a hit, whether that's beauty, food or fitness. Now, if you flip that and you look at what other opportunities are out there, B2B and B2C service opportunities have skyrocketed. People are at home thinking about, how do I paint the walls? How do I improve the home? And home services franchises, they’re booked out, they're having a lot of success because people are sitting there thinking I need to do a home project. 

1851: Are there any common mistakes you see franchisors make when they're trying to grow?

Zink: Bad investments at the growth stage. When you're an emerging brand trying to grow capital is so vital. I see many bad investments, whether it's marketing in the wrong place and marketing in the wrong place for franchise candidates is one of the quickest ways to vacuum up all of your working capital. Marketing is expensive and if you don't get a franchisee out of it, you don't have those franchisees coming back to offset your costs. 

Another mistake is not outsourcing things that are not core to your business, especially in the growth stage. You cannot be great at everything, but you've got to be great at your business. So focus on what you're good at, and outsource the rest. 

1851: Any franchise growth goals for 2021?

Zink: I would like to help 20 franchise brands find qualified franchise partners and award over 1,000 franchise territories — again!