Choosing to go with a franchise rather than starting from scratch means you’re getting proven methods and support from people in the know. That’s a good reason to pick a franchisor that’s been around the block more than once. The Global Franchise Group, LLC is one such franchisor, with a portfolio stuffed with a number of different franchise brands. GFG has four different quick service restaurants under their direction: Marble Slab Creamery, Great American Cookies, Maggie Moo’s, and Pretzel Maker.
If you look at each one of these brands individually, they all offer great opportunities for franchisees along with a package of support and training. In fact, all franchisees of these four brands participate in a specialized GFG U, a state of the art, hands-on training center at the GFG headquarters. Despite that GFG has four different quick service restaurant opportunities, much of the day to day operations of running a franchise comes from the same building blocks. No matter what you’re selling, you need to understand how to manage employees and provide the best customer service. Because GF has experience in a range of settings, they’ve had ample opportunities to develop a training course for daily operations that answers the questions all franchisees have, not just the ones that might pop up specific to one franchise or another. Of course, they still provide specialized training that answers specific questions for each brand, but they have developed systems that work across the board.
Co-Branding with a Franchise Group
As a franchisor with many brands, franchise groups offer opportunities for co-branding you won’t find with other franchises. For instance, say you have a Great American Cookies franchise in a mall and some shoppers in a group want a cookie, you’ll be able to make a sale. But if one person really wants a pretzel and the others aren’t fully committed to a cookie, they might decide to go for another option that has pretzels in the mall or nearby. Instead. GFG fights back against competitors by allowing franchisees to co-brand and have a combined Great American Cookies and Pretzel Maker so shoppers have more options with one franchisee and the franchisee has more opportunities to compete with other business.
Saturation point is also another thing to think about when choosing a franchise. If you want to build a franchise empire, going with a franchisor that has multiple brands can allow you to expand to different brands once one brand has reached saturation. For instance, if your area can only support four Great American Cookies, with GFG you could expand into Marble Slab Creameries and capture more of the market instead of having to stop at four franchises or deal with a second franchisor. The convenience of being able to apply your exiting knowledge of a franchisor to multiple brands can cut down on the time it takes to get a new brand up and running and can help you know how to be successful before you even open your doors to a new brand. What’s more important is that these multi-brand franchisors have whole teams of infrastructure support, from training to construction, that make expansion easy compared to single brand franchisors.
Diversification allows one business to take up the slack when another one might go through a rough patch. With franchise groups, you can get the benefits of multiple brands with one franchise relationship.
