Franchise newsroom
What moved in franchising this week
A weekly brief on franchise operations, unit economics and the tools changing them — researched, sourced and written fresh every week.
Latest
Costing an AI tool per unit: three lines for your worksheet, and one caution about who sold it to you
AI tools for restaurants are now sold at published monthly prices, which means they can finally be modelled rather than guessed. Here is how to put a tool on a per-unit worksheet, and why the recruitment pitch that introduced it needs separate scrutiny.
Two columns most unit-economics worksheets leave blank: who sets your price, and what it costs to leave a vendor
A franchise unit model usually has a revenue line and a cost line and no column for pricing authority or vendor exit cost. Two 2026 court filings show what both are worth in real numbers, and how to put them on the sheet.
What a franchise register proves, and what it does not: a cross-check before recruiting franchisees
Vietnam publishes a public list of registered franchise arrangements. It answers one narrow question well and several important ones not at all. This is how to use it, and what to verify separately.
Item 19 and Item 20: building a unit-economics model from the two FDD pages that allow it
A worksheet for turning the disclosure document into a store-level model, using what the FTC rules actually require a franchisor to put in Item 19 and Item 20, and what they allow a franchisor to leave out.
Disclosing who invests and who operates: a worksheet for the responsibility split in a franchise agreement
A corporate franchise agreement in Thailand this week put the capital on one side and the operating duty on the other. That split is common and rarely written down clearly. Here is a worksheet for putting it in the disclosure document and the term sheet.
Scoring a tier-two province before you sign the lease: a six-line site screen
Vietnam this week gave a clean natural experiment: central city absorption fell while two Japanese brands opened on the same day in a province. This piece turns that contrast into a six-line screen you can run on any provincial site before signing.
Disclosing a variable technology fee: what the disclosure document has to say when the AI bill moves
Outcome-priced AI tools break the standard fee table, because the number is not knowable in advance. This worksheet sets out what a disclosure document and a franchise agreement have to carry instead.
The rent-band screen: a unit-economics worksheet to run before you visit a single site
Published rent bands are wide enough to swing a unit from profitable to loss-making. This worksheet converts a quarterly rent band into a go or no-go screen before any site visit.
When a franchisor buys back its area developers: reading the economics before you sign
On 6 October 2026 The Joint Chiropractic said regional developers fell from about 52% of system units at the start of 2026 to about 32% after this year’s buy-backs, across nine named markets with potential for more than 150 additional clinics. What that shift tells anyone weighing an area development agreement.
Item 19 discipline after a $1.85 million order: a worksheet for financial performance representations
The FTC’s 5 October 2026 settlement with Premier Franchising Group and Franchise Fastlane turns on four specific failures, each of which maps to a line you can check in your own disclosure document today. A worksheet, built from the order.
The payback worksheet: deciding whether a mandated AI upgrade clears the hurdle at one outlet
A franchisor published a per-restaurant cost, an annual benefit and a payback period for its technology-and-remodel programme. Here is how to rebuild that calculation for your own outlet instead of accepting the average.
From an $800 million headline down to one store: how to read a chain deal
A valuation is an opinion about the future. Per-store cash flow is a fact about the present. This walks the Highlands Coffee deal down from one to the other, and shows which step is always missing.
Test the unit before you sell the system: a unit-economics checklist built from 2026 evidence
Most franchise systems fail at the unit, not the brand. This walkthrough uses verified 2026 market data to set out what a single outlet must prove before development rights are worth selling — and pairs each test with the calculator on this site.
Recruiting franchisees in 2026: automate the funnel, never automate the disclosure
Survey data shows AI screening is already standard in one franchise sector and absent in others. The funnel is the right place for automation; the numbers you put in front of a candidate are not. A practical model for both.
Weekly · Free
One new franchise AI tool in your inbox — every week.
Join founders, operators and investors getting a fresh franchise AI tool every Friday — plus the week's most important franchise news. Built for the whole lifecycle: explore, operate, buy & sell, exit.
Free · No spam · Unsubscribe in one click