The Subway franchise agreement and the method to their madness is a perfect template for any up and coming fast food franchising chain.

If you are getting organized to start franchise your company, the Subway franchise agreement and the success it has spawned is a great place to start. The list of examples of great franchised fast food chains is as long as your arm. But among the great stories of how to take a healthy food outlet chain and turn it into a franchising powerhouse, Subway stands out.  The Subway franchise agreement and the other documents that drive that powerhouse can serve as templates for great success for any upstate franchising company that wants to know how to do it right.

You can find evidence of a truly unique approach to building a franchise buried right there in the Subway franchise agreement and their franchise operations guidelines.  Because Subway attacked the franchising market with their own slant on things and they brought the corporate philosophy that made them a huge success before franchising to the game, they exploded on the world of franchise fast food and they just keep on exploding there.

One way that the Subway franchise agreement and the other functional franchising documents laid down a formula for massive success is in their attitude about their customers. Subway made it a point to challenge the empires of McDonald’s and Wendy’s with one simple concept.  That concept was quality foods combined with phenomenal customer service.  You see it and sense it when you walk into a Subway.  That impression that you are eating food that is good for you served by happy and friendly employees is no fluke.  Franchising documents like the Subway franchise agreement made those values job one for any Subway franchise.

Putting the franchise owner on the pedestal.

Perhaps more than any other international franchising company, the Subway franchise agreement is all about the beginning of a powerful partnership between Subway and each and every franchise owner.  Subway is notorious for treating their franchise owners like royalty. The way they take great care of the people who make money for them has resulted in the Subway franchise agreementbecoming one of the most sought after franchises to own in the fast food industry.

For any fast food company that is thinking about getting into franchising, you cannot go wrong modeling how your franchise relationships work form the Subway franchise agreement.  If you can replicate the incredibly strong relationship between the Subway franchises and the corporation and the volcanic growth that Subway has enjoyed because of their unique approach to franchising, you will be in for a very prosperous future to be sure.

 

By looking at an example franchise agreement draft that have been used before, you can get a feel for what will be involved in buying that franchise that you want to be your small business.

There are plenty of examples of a franchise agreement draft that any starry eyed franchise owner like you can find to study as part of your homework phase of your quest. Getting your arms around all the franchise information you can handle well in advance can take the fear and trembling out of what you will have to do to have your own franchise of a very successful business someday.

Part of that preparation is taking a good hard look at the different types of franchise documents that will become your bibles in preparation for becoming a franchise owner.  The franchise agreement drafts that you look are perfect for giving you a good feel for the document you will sign when you sit down that that franchise company and take ownership over one of their hot properties.

It is easy to get intimidated by a very large company that may let you give them several wheelbarrows full of money to own one of their franchisees. You can take the steam out of that intimidation factor by studying more than one franchise agreement draft along with other franchise documents so you do not feel like you are reading a foreign language when the real deal documents show up at your door.  Take some time to read examples of franchise disclosure documents  and any other sample franchise documents you can lay your hands on.  All of this preparation will pay off big time when you get into the franchise negotiation game in a big way.

Basic training for buying a franchise.

In lots of areas of life where you take on a big challenge, the preparation time is the most important phase.  In sports, training camp is vital for a team to win. For the military, boot camp is what makes soldiers who can win battles. So look on the time you spend with that franchise disclosure draft and reading up on what it takes to win that big franchise deal as your own personal basic training for buying a franchise.

Lots of people set out to buy a franchise and do not make it. When you start having discussions with the big shots from the franchising company, knowing their lingo and being one jump ahead of them every step of the way is the path to a big win.  By doing your homework looking at a franchise agreement draft and doing other preparation study, you won’t walk into those meetings looking and smelling like a rube.  You will behave like someone who knows their stuff and is ready to take on that franchise purchase and make a big success of it.  That is a sure path to winning that franchise purchase and being on you way to a long and very prosperous career running your own franchise small business.

 

Looking to the postal operations manual as a template for a well run franchised operation will give you inspiration for how to be efficient when you start your own franchise.

The postal operations manual is one of the best kept secrets that are hidden in plain sight.  When you think about it, the post office represents one of the largest, most active franchised businesses in the world. It is also a heavily distributed operation that runs like a well oiled machine completely under the radar.  We are so used to the post office coming through with the mail on time and professionally that if there is ever a problem with the mail, we react like the world is coming to an end.  That is just how much we assume that the post office will always do its job well. The reason for that efficiency is the postal operations manual.

When you are ready to sign a franchise agreement and start your own business, the first step is to find a great franchising company to become a part of. While the post office is not the place where you would make a franchising investment, you will find no better example of how to run a diversified franchise-like operation than the one that is powered by the postal operations manual.  Despite the jokes about postmen and the negative stereotypes, day and day out the postal operations manual assures that the function of that organization is fulfilled with an extremely high success rate without fanfare or notice by most of its customers.

If your franchise lives up to the postal operations manual, you will succeed.

You can get ahead of the game to develop an operations manual template if you reflect on the efficiency that happens every day of the week when the daily mail is delivered to your house.  The discipline and the values of a postal operations manual are evident in the behavior and performance of the army of postal workers who slave away without praise or rewards for the good work they do.

If one day out of the year the mail is delivered an hour late or a day is missed, most of us behave like it represents a national emergency.  That is just how effective the postal operations manual trains their people to run a reliable organization that lives up to customer expectations as a matter of routine.  Consider also that for the tiny price of the cost of a stamp, the post office pulls off the Herculean task of delivering your mail every day and every month of the year.

The way the postal operations manual assures this kind of high level effectiveness is even more shocking when you consider that the post office is a government agency.  We have to put that aside when we look at the many ways that the postal operations manual would make a cracker jack template for any franchising effort in the world. Considering it is a part of the government, the post office methods for getting the job done right and doing it every day of the year should stand as a model for the rest of us to follow.

You send a franchise contract example to comply with franchise law but it can do so much more than just keep you legal.

You are required to send a franchise contract example no less than a week before the time comes to sign contracts (franchise agreement, OM  etc… ) and make the franchise relationship between and that new franchise owner a binding marriage.  When you think about it, one week is not much time for a potential franchise owner to review a legally binding document that will become his or her new life for many years to come. That is why when you are developing your plan to get good franchise information to future franchise owners, it is smart to do more than what is required by franchise law.

The process of sending to hopeful and wide eyed franchise applicants things like the franchise disclosure document and the franchise contract example is dictated by law so that nobody puts their name on the dotted line not knowing what they were getting into.  In the history of franchise development, there have been plenty of cases of fraud and companies selling fake franchises only to take a powder with the franchise fees and leave some heartbroken franchise applicants with nothing left but broken dreams.

The heavy handed legal overhead that requires that you send documents like the franchise contract example are part of the steps the government watch dog types did to get in the middle of the process of building a franchise relationship and make everyone play nice. That background might help you not dread every minute that goes into preparing workable documents such as the franchise contract example because these documents are the building blocks to one of the truly great business relationships you can have when that franchise owner kicks in and starts making piles of money for you.

Don’t let the franchise contract example do all the hard work of building a relationship with that franchise owner.

It is easy enough to do the bare minimum when putting together the franchise contract example.  You can send along basically a replica of the franchise agreement that will be signed when that big day comes to make the franchise relationship permanent.  But instead of seeing the franchise contract example as a big fat nuisance, think again.  What it really should look like to you is a big fat opportunity to build a solid relationship with each new franchise owner.

If you put yourself in the shoes of that new franchise applicant, unless they are a seasoned old pro at buying a franchise, they are looking to you to guide them through the process.  By making the process easy rather than hard and by using tools such as the franchise contract example to replace that look of confusion and fear with one of trust and excitement, you will have worked some serious magic and built a friend for life in that new franchise owner.

That friend for life will work like a Trojan to build the best possible franchise for you.  By simply delivering that franchise contract example with time to spare, you are helping that franchise rookie understand every paragraph of that important document.  Then by opening lines of communication so questions can be asked, those interactions turn into a business relationship that will result in a dynamite franchise partner who will just keep on delivering the goods for you year after year after year.

The McDonald’s franchise agreement model should be a model for any business that wants to make it big in the world of franchising.

You really cannot go wrong looking at the McDonald’s franchise agreement as a model for how to get it right when it comes to franchising your company.  The McDonald’s people have had such an explosion of success that when you say the word, “franchising”, you almost automatically think of McDonald’s.  So when you begin to get serious about starting your own very successful company out on the exciting adventure of franchising, you do not have to look too far past the McDonald’s franchise agreement as a model for how to grow a business to the empire level and run it like a well oiled machine.

You don’t get to where you are running thousands of franchise outlets and keeping them all profitable and happy overnight. That is why the McDonald’s franchise agreement that they set up with their franchise owners is an evidence of how to do it right. It is a tricky balance to make sure there is conformity in all of your franchise outlets and still give each franchise owner plenty of room to make that franchise outlet his or her own.  But when it comes to a franchise that is a rock solid choice for fast food for millions of customers because they know they will get the same quality of food, service and dining experience from Boston to Seattle to Hong King, McDonald’s pulls it off.

Every aspect of how this massive franchise chain grew up from one store to tens of thousands deserves attention.  From the McDonald’s franchise agreement to their operations manual and their army of field managers, knowing how they got it right over and over again would be pure gold in terms of franchising wisdom. If you are just starting out in planning now to launch your first franchise outlet, it is not too early to think of yourself as a massive franchising success like McDonald’s.  Even if you are not franchising inexpensive fast food and Happy Meals, the principles of running a big chain that are represented by the McDonald’s franchise agreement deserve respect and study.

To say that McDonald’s wrote the book on how to hit it big in franchising is an understatement.

There is an art to running a highly successful franchise chain and the relationship between McDonald’s and their thousands of franchise owners is a modern marvel. Much of that success is in the structure of the documents such as the McDonald’s franchise agreement that set up the franchise to succeed.  But there is no question that McDonald’s has set up a field operation to keep that vast army of spread out small business people operating at peak performance.  It is a network that is so efficient that any modern army would be jealous.

The documents that are the backbone of the stunning success of this massive fast food chain include the McDonald’s franchise agreement along with the franchise operating manual and their system of communications that keeps their thousands of loyal franchise owners all marching to the same tune.

The lesson is clear. To launch a franchise operation that targets phenomenal success, the McDonald’s model has plenty to teach any new franchising operation.  That means learning the nuts and bolts of how the McDonald’s franchise agreement helps to set their franchise owners on a path of success. It also means picking the brains of those in the know about how McDonald’s runs this amazing operation day in and day out. This is the kind of field research that will pay off big time because even if you are not setting out to become a billion dollar multinational franchise chain, the people at McDonald’s have plenty to teach us other than what is in their secret sauce.