If I Could Have Bought a Franchise 10 Years Ago, What Would it have Been?

Picture a business time machine. One that allows you to go back to any moment, fix any mistake and alter it to ensure guaranteed professional success. What do you do? Has there always been that one concept you were unsure of becoming a part of that turned out successfully? What is your “one that got away” of business?

Without the present ability of time travel, we are prohibited to the “what if’s” of life and of business.

Sure, in an ideal world we could go back and fix every business mistake we made, and invest in every new concept that we know now, ten years down the road will be the next big thing. But that defeats the ambiguity—the gamble of the unknown.

The time prior to investing in a concept can often be daunting, especially when it’s a new idea about to be franchised. It is difficult to determine what is truly going to survive the test of time, even for the most seasoned of franchisors.

We asked one of these franchisors about this common, inevitable pause prior to investing in a business.

“What we find often is that people keep delaying it—they keep waiting for that perfect business. One that they have so much passion about, that they see as the next big thing; and those don’t just come around,” said Rick Robinson, President and Founder of Services4Franchising.”So they wait and wait, and they never buy. Or, they do buy something that turns out to be a great business.”

Robinson also emphasized how difficult it can be to spot those franchise concepts until it is too late, but how it’s also important to give them a chance. Because once one franchise sees success, it won’t be long until another tries to emulate it. And then another and another; and value drops down.

“There used to be two or three franchisors in senior care—now there are probably fifty. And it gets really diluted. So sometimes there is a really good advantage in being kind of an early adopter or a newly emerging franchisor of franchise industry—you know, to be on that upswing,” Robinson said.

In terms of specific franchises, when asked how to spot the opportunities to jump on specific to the food industry, Robinson referenced the pizza sector and its newly evolved state that many have begun to take advantage of.

“The American taste for pizza is changing—it used to be a lot of bread and dough, and you ate more bread and dough than you did toppings,” Robinson said. “Now, it’s gone the other direction, where it is more about the toppings and not eating all of those carbs. You choose the ingredients you want, it goes into a brick oven and it’s cooked in ninety seconds.”

Steve Beagleman of SMB Franchise Advisors* also emphasized something important when choosing the industry you want to franchise with—finding a concept that coincides with the lifestyle you think is best for you.

“I would go back a little longer than 10 years and say a Rita's Italian Ice Franchise. It was seasonal, so you work hard for 7 to 8 months and then you take 4 months off,” Beagleman said.

All in all, hindsight is 20:20. But time has told that sometimes the biggest risks have the biggest pay out.