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For new franchisees, their grand opening is the biggest event that they will put on.

What are your tips for getting it right?

Here are some ideas on grand opening signage, from FASTSIGNS.

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In 2013 How Do You Roll - HDYR sushi made a big splash on Shark Tank.

However, the match with HDYR & Kevin O'Leary was not to be.

And did not make it past the post-show deal closing round and due diligence.

The fast-casual, create-your-own sushi restaurant franchise, How Do You Roll, was pitched on Shark Tank in 2013.

Yuen Yung and his brother Peter learned the restaurant business from their parents who ran a mom and pop restaurant in Chinatown, New York.

After college, the brothers opened the first How Do You Roll restaurant in Austin, Texas. On Shark Tank, they made a deal with Kevin "Mr. Wonderful" O'Leary -- $1 million for 20 percent equity."

"The deal with O'Leary fell through and the Austin restaurant closed, as did two Chicago locations.But there are still two How Do You Roll locations open - in Fort Myers, Florida and North Hollywood, California. " - Source August 2, 2016, 2paragraphs.com

HDYR was not deterred by their Shark Tank fiasco of getting a deal with a Shark only to lose it after the show.

They went on to sell franchises.

In fact, they inked a 25 unit development deal for Washington D.C., Maryland, Delaware, and part of Virginia with great fanfare.

Then from a QSR magazine article:

"How Do You Roll? currently has ten units open in Arizona, Florida, and Texas. The company has signed franchise and development agreements for more than 400 units over the next twenty years."

These agreements span Arizona, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, the Middle East, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Texas, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Western Canada." - Source January 17, 2014, QSR

What went wrong with these aspiring sushi franchise tycoons?

Here's the Yung's Shark Tank pitch on the ABC show.

Lots of Unanswered Questions

What's the status of HDYR franchising today?

What are the HDYR franchise owners doing with their businesses?

Who owns the HDYR concept and IP?

What are they planning to do with it?

Being a franchisor and building a durable and sustainable franchise network requires more than reality TV notoriety and a pitch.

It takes a financially attractive business model, a reliable supply chain, with great branding; solid operations, training & support, and great franchise owner recruitment.

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The costs associated with slow franchisee ramp-up are many.

A slow ramp-up puts your your franchisee at risk.

Slow ramp-ups affect not only the franchisee in question, but the entire network & your own staff are also influenced by those under-performing franchisees.

The costs of franchisees' slow ramp-ups include:

1. Unplanned Expenses. When franchisees struggle, more unplanned training and support resources are necessary to remedy their situation. The money franchisors spend in this effort is often syphoned away from resources the franchisor would have invested in strengthening the system, hiring key people, introducing innovation, and improving the long-term stability of the brand.
2. Poor Morale. As the franchisor's support staff appear to take one distressed call after another from a steady stream of "problem" franchisees, their own morale suffers. They begin to doubt that the system works. They become more detached and frustrated, which impacts the entire system.
3. Fractured Franchisee Relationships. Struggling franchisees get frustrated and discouraged, and they share their disappointment with other franchisees, bringing down the morale of the entire system and fracturing the franchisee-franchisor relationship.
4. Halted Momentum. The enthusiasm that franchisees experience during training is thwarted if they can't produce results when they get back home. Once lost, this momentum can't be recovered and a new drive must be created, which is not easy to do.
5. Poor Validation. As frustration levels go up, validation starts to suffer as under-producing and unsatisfied franchisees share their frustration with prospects. Negative franchisee validation destroys franchise sales, halts growth, eliminates future royalty streams, and decreases the dollars franchisors can spend on tools and support systems to avoid the problem.
6. Brand Deterioration. Under-producing, unhappy franchisees create negative customer experiences. If the unit or territory fails, customers will remember, and it will be difficult and, in some cases, perhaps even impossible to regain lost traction.
7. Breakdown in Leadership. Struggling franchisees rally other franchisees or franchisor's support staff to their plight affecting the franchisor's ability to effectively lead the larger franchisee body. In many systems, the frustration engendered by this breakdown in leadership creates a culture of compliance and top-down authority, rather than a participatory culture focused on positive relationships and results.

Unfortunately, some franchisors actually add to the ramp-up problem!

And the the delays are all visible to the world, the Item 20 will show all the sold but not open franchise units. You need to make sure your Grand Opening process works, even if that mean hiring outside professionals to assist.

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The post Is the Slow Ramp-up of your Franchisees Costing You too Much? Is It Risking the Success of your Franchisees? appeared first on InFraSu.

Sponsoring morning or afternoon traffic updates on local radio stations can be a great way to reinforce your grand opening message.

If you have ever listened to radio on your way to or from work, you're already aware of the benefits of traffic updates. In metro areas and even large towns, stations have added traffic to their morning and afternoon programming as a "public service" to their listeners.

The sponsorship of these updates represents a revenue stream to the stations. But, used correctly, they also represent a great opportunity for you to increase awareness of your new store opening, and deliver a call-to-action to your potential customers.

Here are three advantages to having traffic packages as part of your grand opening media mix:

1. Frequency

Stations deliver their traffic updates multiple times, every hour, during standard "drive times" in your market. In turn, your message is being delivered multiple times to the same radio audience over that same compressed period of time.

Plus, many sponsorships are structured with both a "billboard" (e.g., "this traffic report is brought to you by _________") and a 10 or 15-second commercial message. So, within each report, you're gaining double the exposure for your brand.

2. Reach

Traffic reports are usually implemented consistently across entire station ownership groups, and sometimes even across multiple station groups. That means your single sponsorship can be heard on numerous stations in your market.

Sponsorship packages, from providers like Clear Channel's Total Traffic Network, will admittedly include placing your message on both powerhouse stations as well as those with much smaller audiences.

But, you're extending your reach in the marketplace. And, you can (and should) negotiate the sponsorship costs, to make sure the pricing is fair for what you're getting in return.

3. Cost

And, speaking of costs ... they obviously vary, depending upon your market and the size of the overall radio audience you're reaching. But, fortunately, the traffic format doesn't require (i.e., allow) the use of a traditional 30 or 60-second commercial.

Advertisers usually provide the copy (usually 30-45 words) and the station either pre-records your message or reads it "live" within each traffic update. Regardless, you avoid the cost of audio production, voice talent(s) and music.

Traffic radio sponsorships are definitely not appropriate for every brand message. It's hard (if not impossible) to introduce a complex new program or offer within the format.

But, traffic packages can be a great complement to an established message, or one that is spelled out more completely in another medium.

If you're opening a store, they can be the perfect way to invite the public to your new location. With some careful writing, you may even have enough time to hint at the fun and excitement you have planned for your grand opening.

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In a perfect world, all franchisees would follow the system exactly as intended; they would all ramp up quickly without struggle; and, they would all be successful and happy.

You wouldn't have to answer distressed calls or have tough conversations with under-performing franchisees who blame you, the franchisor, for their failures. However, reality never seems this easy. To some degree or another every franchisor deals with dissatisfied and under-performing franchisees.  

Yet, the sustained growth of franchisors is directly related to their ability to have training and support systems that produce positive results quickly and minimize franchisee dissatisfaction.

A quick ramp-up is the key to keeping a franchisee's head in the game and to eliminating operational and cash flow problems today in the future.

Why don't franchisees who receive the same training and who are being taught the same system have the same results? Why is it that some "get it" right away and run with it while others struggle, and others even fail? 

There are many reasons behind franchisee success-failure statistics, yet they can all be boiled down to the fact that all franchisees are not equal.

Each franchisee fits somewhere in the scale between the ultimate entrepreneur and the ultimate employee with their own unique combination of the traits and characteristics from both ends of the entrepreneurial spectrum.

Additionally, they bring with them different experiences, learning styles, preferences, levels of expertise, beliefs systems, and habits that can work for or against them. And, the challenge lies in effectively addressing this diversity.  

Furthermore, investing in a franchise is such a drastic change that for most people it engenders chaos, similar to a personal inner revolution with much emotional upheaval affecting all facets of the life of franchisees, including their ability to learn.

If training and support systems are not properly structured, if they don't account for franchisees' innate differences and for their emotional reactions, you simply end up with longer learning curves, slower ramp-up, increased franchisee dissatisfaction, and smaller franchisor's royalty stream. 

The bottom line is that franchisees who don't ramp up quickly create more organizational challenges and contribute fewer dollars to help the franchisor fix them.

If franchisees don't experience some early wins, they lose confidence; and, if franchisees' attitudes start to decline before they achieve system mastery, they can slip into "survival mode," which leads them to wrong decisions, panic, and frustration.

Getting them back on track becomes harder and harder until eventually they become part of the statistics we don't like to discuss-they fail.  And, we failed them.

The post Franchisees' Ramp-up Too Slow? Why? appeared first on InFraSu.