Support Your Local Franchise!
There has been a pretty popular movement in recent years, especially in more rural areas, to support local business. Certainly this is a very noble aim and one that should be supported by anyone who wants to see their community prosper. However, in the push to support local business, many franchise owners are thrown under the bus of public opinion.
To say that franchises are not local business is misleading and misguided at best. In fact, such assertions are patently false in a great majority of cases. Just because a franchise’s franchising organization may be located in a far distant city says very little about where the profits from that business are going.
The fact of the matter is, well over half of individuals who decide to purchase a franchise go into business within the community in which they live. This means that the franchise owner is, in fact, local business. However, if this simple truth is not sufficient to quiet those who would see franchises driven out of communities simply because they pay a small percentage of their profits to a corporate office for use of a brand name, then more facts are warranted in support of franchises as local businesses.
Beyond being owned by individuals from the communities in which they operate, franchises also draw their workforce from that same community. What may be perceived as taking away business from one local businessman is simply providing business for another, as well as providing jobs for many others within the community. Because franchises are more likely to succeed than independent businesses, anyway, the jobs of those employed by these franchises can be viewed as more secure as well.
Furthermore, the simple fact that a franchise operates under a corporate logo does not mean that they, in some form or fashion, necessarily exist outside of the normal business community within an area. Though a franchisor may establish regulations regarding the quality of goods purchased by its franchisees, or may even establish guidelines about specific vendors and suppliers that may be used, in many cases those vendors and suppliers deemed acceptable fall within the locale of the franchise.
For a franchisor to insist that franchisee use products from across the country when a vendor within the region may be just as well suited is hardly sensible. This is especially true in the cases of fast-food franchises, where a high degree of product freshness is necessary. Therefore, to assume that franchises are eschewing the services and products of other local vendors is not true in all cases and should not be used as a blanket accusation against franchising as a whole.
The simple truth is that franchises do represent, more often than not, local business. Yes, the name may be national. However, the owner, the employees and even the supplies are most often local. The franchise bolsters the economy of the community and the franchisee most likely keeps his or her money in the same bank that supplied the loan to establish the franchise. Franchises are every bit as much a part of the communities in which the operate as the most provincial “Mom and Pop” type of establishment.
