If you’re a restaurant franchise operator, you’re likely invited to some form of regular meeting with other franchisees and head office. How often does your franchise hold franchisee conferences? Once a year, every other year?
Here are the top five reasons you should make time to attend:
1. Get the News
Understand what’s new with the franchise you have bought into. What are the upcoming marketing campaigns, policy changes, and improved procedures? How does your stores’ performance compare with trends in your region, state, and nationwide?
Get caught up on any upcoming changes that may affect your location, such as new menu items, promotional strategies, and best practices.
2. Training
Opening a new franchise location is a demanding process for franchisees. You might have received extensive training upfront, but over time you may have forgotten some key components. Take advantage of refresher and new courses offered.
"At the franchise level, we have conventions and we have webinars, and we bring people into our conventions and on our webinars that are good at [employee management]. [We] continue to help us support and give the tools to our franchisees as ongoing training."
- Mary Kay Haas, Pizza Factory in How to Hire, Train & Retain Great Employees
3. Meet the Team
Get to know other franchisees. They have experienced the same problems that you have, and will have some useful insight.
Your fellow franchisees may be willing to share operational numbers that you can use for benchmarks for labor, sales, inventory and other key performance indictors.
Word of mouth is not only local these days: your brand image can be influenced by what happens in other locations—even if they’re across the country. Help your fellow franchisees to strengthen the brand’s reputation.
4. Talk to Corporate
Take the time to connect with the corporate team. Put a face to the emails and phone calls you receive. Find out more about programs to support franchisee success. They are there to help your business.
5. Meet with your Service Providers
Supplier partnerships can be critical to your profit margin, and franchise meetings and conferences offer the opportunity to talk with them face to face. In this environment, they can show you the latest technology, answer questions, and introduce new options. They may also have resources that are specific to your franchise, like training guides on restaurant tech, or branded products.
Posted on Wed, Jun 06, 2018 @ 08:06 AM.
Updated on August 20, 2021 @ 1:41 PM PST.
