While you may not hear the word "franchising" very
often in casual conversation, franchising itself plays a
substantial part in our daily lives. Whether we're dropping our
kids off at child care, getting trained on the latest computer
program, meeting the new temp, mailing an important package or
cruising through the local drive-thru, we can potentially intersect
a franchise at almost any given moment. It's been estimated
than one of every three retail dollars you spend will go to a
franchise.
Obviously, franchise companies are reaping big rewards.
Franchising grew 13 percent in 2000, and systems are continuing to
expand, according to Franchise Recruiters Ltd.'s annual
Franchise Business Development Survey.
As the scope of franchising expands, an inevitable question
arises: "How can I get in on the action?" A growing
number of prospective entrepreneurs consider franchising more than
just a vehicle for everyday convenience-they see it as a vehicle
for long-term business success. It's exactly for this reason
that 22 years ago Entrepreneur magazine had the idea to
create the first-ever comprehensive franchise listing, the
Franchise 500.
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Because the research phase that takes place before buying a
franchise is so crucial to success as a franchisee, our mission is
to take the first major step for you. Each year, we gather Uniform
Franchise Offering Circulars (UFOCs) from hundreds of franchise
companies, simultaneously sending out surveys to every known
franchise. We then spend hour upon hour calling these franchises to
confirm the information, before inputting their forms into our
database. Finally, we apply our exclusive formula to the final
information and come up not only with the world's most
comprehensive listing of franchises, but also a widely respected
ranking of top franchises.
Though we've been doing this for more than two decades now,
our information continues to expand. We always marvel at how many
new developments crop up with each listing. This year, a few
newcomers to our Top 10 jumped
dramatically up our ranking-Quizno's went from #47 to #6, while
Taco Bell leapt from #21 to #5.
Also, after observing a hot new fast-food franchise industry, we
added a new category to this year's listing: chicken wings.
Will chicken wings capture America's taste buds and step up
alongside hamburger and pizza franchise veterans in the coming
years? We'll watch and see.
Meanwhile, a franchise category that used to be one of our
hottest seems to be experiencing somewhat of a cooling trend. Last
year, eight juice bar franchises were included in the Franchise
500; this year, that number fell to five.
And we're still keeping an eye on tech franchises. Though
dotcoms dominated the business buzz (for better and for worse) in
2000, we still haven't seen that trend translate to
franchising. Though two major tech franchises, Quik Internet and
Worldsites, continue to grow, we've only seen a handful of
newcomers in the listing category. Of course, tech is undeniably
affecting the way all franchises do business-more franchises have
Web sites than ever before; many have even added .com to their
names.
There are, of course, too many other trends and surprises
sprinkled throughout our ranking to mention here. We invite you to
take your time and search through the Franchise 500® for the
information you need to begin your personal franchise journey. Once
you've become accustomed with the Franchise 500®, e-mail
us at entmag@entrepreneur.com to let
us know what you like or dislike about our listings. Give us
suggestions for information you'd like to see in future years.
And 22 years from now, we expect to hear how successful you've
become in franchising as well.
Click
here to see our franchise listings.