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Whenever costs climb and consumers tighten their belts, businesses face a choice: Either raise prices or cut staff and services.

But the smartest franchise brands are now wondering: What if there’s another way? The franchisors in these brands have begun working closely with their franchisees to analyze every dollar of every cost, all while asking tough questions: Does this actually improve the customer experience? Does it help franchisees make more money? And if not, why are we doing it?

The result is a sharper approach to franchise operations in difficult moments — one that removes unnecessary costs while investing in what truly matters to customers and franchise owners. It’s called “value reengineering.”

Here, we’ll walk through how five franchise brand leaders reengineered their value. Each story outlines a real problem a brand faced, the practical innovation they thought up to solve it, and a takeaway that every business can learn from. 

Related: Complex Pricing Destroys Customer Trust. Here’s the Better Approach.

Problem #1: If customers have new needs, you need new tech to match.

Many franchise businesses face the same challenge: customers expect transparency, personalization, and proof that they’re getting real value — but franchisees sometimes operate with outdated systems that make delivering that experience difficult. Brands want to stand out, but clunky tech holds them back.

Dog daycare and boarding brand Dogtopia had always differentiated itself by using an enrollment-based model and offering all-day play in large, open rooms. But as customers became more focused on the health and longevity of their pets, Dogtopia saw two opportunities: First, to show families how their daycare benefits their dog’s health; and second, to simplify the franchisees’ workload so they can focus more on directly engaging and serving their guests.

Neil Gill, Dogtopia’s CEO and president, explains that the strategy began with a simple observation. “Because we see the dog twice a week, we spend 10 hours a day in this open play environment,” he says. “We get to know the dog in a way parents can’t.” That creates an opportunity to deliver more than just care — Dogtopia could also deliver measurable wellness.

But the brand’s technology wasn’t built to do that. Dogtopia was managing its marketing tools, point of sale, and customer data across different platforms. For franchisees, this meant that operations weren’t centralized, and individual stores’ teams needed to manage and track many different things. And for pet parents, it meant that they got no clear picture of their dog’s daily wellbeing.

Dogtopia made the decision to build a fully integrated, proprietary tech stack on Salesforce. It automates lead management, customer journeys, and reengagement messaging — removing back-office tasks from store teams so they can focus on safe playrooms and great customer care.

But this tech stack goes beyond just simple operations. Dogtopia thinks of it as a “wellness ecosystem” — and the centerpiece is a new activity collar, which Dogtopia created in partnership with University of Cambridge researchers. It functions as a health-monitoring device that tracks miles walked, activity patterns, and changes in behavior, and streams that information directly to pet owners. People can now see how active their dog is during daycare, and Dogtopia teams can spot early signs of possible health issues.

Here’s one striking example of the value of this new technology: A Dogtopia team member noticed that a particular pet’s activity dropped by half over a week. “We suggested they take the dog to the vet,” said Gill. “The vet discovered early-stage bone cancer. Treated in three months. The parent said the activity collar saved their dog’s life.”

The result? The brand is seeing early upside as automation rolls out. Customers get transparency and a longer, healthier life for their dogs.

Related: Follow These 7 Business Strategies to Future-Proof Your Business

Problem #2: If you need to redesign stores, it must make economic sense.

Like any retail business, franchises go through occasional remodeling. This is complicated in franchising, where a remodeling concept must be executed store by store, by individual franchisees. It’s often a sore subject. Remodels are generally mandated by a brand’s franchise agreement to ensure the brand’s look, products, and experience are consistent and up-to-date across all locations. But they can be expensive, time-consuming, and full of requirements that have more to do with brand aesthetics than customer needs.

Franchisees often ask the same question: Why am I paying for this remodel if customers don’t notice?

Dunkin’ franchisees were asking that a lot recently. A few years ago, the brand’s remodel had mixed benefits for guests, with limited flexibility for different unit sizes, sales volumes, or local market realities. Many of the requirements were cosmetic and costly.

When the pandemic hit, cash flow tightened, and remodeling became even less appealing. As Dunkin’ multi-unit franchisee and Brand Advisory Council leader Rob Branca put it, “These tactics weren’t really delivering. They weren’t impacting the consumer experience or increasing throughput or profitability.”

Dunkin’ and its elected franchisee leadership launched a fully collaborative overhaul. First, they value-engineered what’s called the “image package” — assessing anything in the remodel that guests didn’t see or didn’t care about. Those things were either removed from the list of requirements or replaced with a lower-cost equivalent. For instance: The drive-thru crash bar. (That’s the bumper along the drive-thru lane that prevents cars from scraping or denting the building as they pull close.) The original remodel required a replacement, but the only difference was the paint color. So instead of spending money to replace it, Dunkin’ said franchisees could just paint their existing one.

Then the brand introduced new remodeling tiers — full, limited, and ultra-limited—based on store volume and configuration. Stores with no dining room or no drive-thru didn’t have to pay for updates that no customer would ever see. Dunkin’ even added a financial incentive where franchisees who completed certain scopes could extend the time before their next remodel. 

Dunkin’s approach shows what happens when franchisors and franchisees act as true partners: unnecessary costs drop, remodels accelerate, and the entire brand’s asset base gets stronger. By focusing only on what matters to guests and operators, Dunkin’ turned a financial burden into a growth engine.

Related: Losing Customers Daily? These 5 Fixes Could Save Your Business

Problem #3: If your sales process isn’t simple, you’re losing customers.

If your business relies on turning online leads into customers, then you know the danger of friction. If you place too many hurdles between your user and their goal, sales simply drop off. 

We Sell Restaurants, which is a franchise network of brokers, decided to take on this challenge. CEO and cofounder Robin Gagnon knew that the journey of buying a restaurant is an emotional one — but until recently, the brand’s digital experience didn’t reflect that. Listings were inconsistent. Videos were buried. The process required too many clicks, too many forms, and too much patience. “We had too many registration steps,” said Gagnon. “We had this very limited media experience for potential buyers and were inconsistent in how we presented it.”

We Sell Restaurants saw an opportunity to rebuild the experience from the ground up.

The first major change was the introduction of Single Sign-On, which allowed prospects to make user accounts with preexisting credentials from popular platforms. Just one click, and they were in. 

Next, they redesigned restaurant listings to put visual media front and center. But high-quality video isn’t easy for every franchisee to produce, and it became a huge source of friction. So the brand built an AI-driven script generator. Franchisees enter the reason for sale, and AI creates a polished, on-brand script. The system then uploads it automatically, cross-posts it to YouTube, and optimizes descriptions for SEO — all without franchisees lifting a finger. They also began leveraging AI to write listing descriptions, which now gives franchisees consistent, professional-quality content in seconds instead of hours.

The result? An 89% increase in prospects moving to the next step within the first two months.

By removing friction and elevating storytelling, We Sell Restaurants proved that value reengineering isn’t always about dollars — sometimes it’s about time, clarity, and emotion. When you give people a clean, modern experience, they stay engaged, and franchisees gain more inquiries, more visibility, and more confidence in the system.

Related: This Strategy is the Key to Scaling Your Business — and Reducing Costs Along the Way

Problem #4: If your offerings aren’t clear, people buy less.

As people’s dining behavior changes, restaurants often struggle with two key aspects of the guest experience: They must modernize their dining rooms and also update their menus to reflect diners’ evolving preferences.

Chicken Salad Chick was feeling that punch. Its dining rooms were built for an era where families and other larger groups dined out together more. The typical location offered 2,800 square feet, with a mix of booths, banquettes, and tables. The layout looked great — but the latest utilization data did not.

The brand’s research showed that most dine-in guests were now visiting in parties of one or two, and they overwhelmingly chose to sit in booths made for four. That meant that tables were often occupied at only 25% to 50% capacity, leading to wasted seats, higher buildout costs, and inflated rent. 

At the same time, the menu centered around two signature combinations: the Chick Special and its more profitable upgrade, the Trio. These options sometimes confused new guests, and gave little flexibility for pricing or upsells. Franchisees had limited levers to increase check averages or offer value-based bundles.

By stepping back and studying guest behavior, the Chicken Salad Chick team saw two solutions: They began replacing the booths with flexible banquette seating and movable two-top tables. The dining room footprint shrank by roughly 500 square feet in new builds, reducing rent by an estimated $25,000 a year per location. The change also had a big impact on buildout costs. “Our goal was to try to save about $100,000, and we figured out how to do that with just about the same number of seats,” said Scott Deviney, the brand’s president and CEO.

For the menu transformation. instead of two complex bundles, they created intuitive categories: one scoop or two scoops; one side or two sides; sandwiches and melts. The brand also supplied clearer photos of the much simpler options.

Suddenly the ordering process made sense to new guests and busy staff. The bonus? The upgraded “trio” (the meal with two sides) jumped from 20% of orders to 33%, which helped with average check size and franchisee profitability.

By focusing on how people really behaved (and not how the brand hoped they’d behave!), Chicken Salad Chick created a smaller, cheaper, more profitable model, all without reducing the quality of the guest experience. 

The lesson: real value appears when you study the details of everyday operations, identify what’s not working and design it out of the operation. 

Related: 7 Things Every Growing Business Needs to Monitor to Scale Successfully

Problem #5: If your system is old, you can’t please young customers.

Most franchise brands want to modernize — offer digital ordering, streamline operations, add automation—but innovation is expensive. When every brand in a portfolio builds everything separately, costs skyrocket and progress slows.

GoTo Foods — the parent company of Jamba, McAlister’s Deli, Schlotzsky’s, and more — saw a challenge across its portfolio: younger guests wanted speed, convenience, and personalization. But the company’s store designs and ordering technology didn’t fully meet those expectations.

For Jamba, the brand needed a fresher, more efficient identity — one that fit its upbeat personality while also reducing operational strain on franchisees. So it refreshed its entire ordering system, and developed a new platform it calls “Hello Sunshine.”

The prototype introduced self-order kiosks for reducing bottlenecks, digital menu screens for better merchandising, and a dedicated pickup zone for digital orders. Franchisees were deeply involved in Hello Sunshine’s design through advisory councils. The new platform made the brand feel more modern, but also made operations faster, more consistent, and easier for team members.

Because GoTo Foods built Hello Sunshine on the platform it shares across all its brands, it  will be able to build the system for Jamba and then create the opportunity to scale elsewhere. “As a platform company, we use shared technology, insights and innovation to help every brand perform better,” explained Jim Holthouser, former CEO of GoTo Foods. This will hopefully eliminate duplicating efforts while giving franchisees tools that deliver real efficiency.

The Hello Sunshine model shows that value reengineering doesn’t have to be about subtraction — sometimes, it’s about giving franchisees more of the right things.

Related: How to Choose the Right Pricing Strategy for Your Small Business

The value of value reengineering

Across the stories of these five franchise systems, it becomes clear that reengineering is not about cutting costs — it’s about clarifying value. It’s about removing what customers don’t notice, what franchisees don’t need, and what no longer serves the brand, and then — with intention — reinvesting those dollars, hours, and tools into experiences that matter.

In tight times, it’s easy to go on offense and raise prices, and it’s easy to go on defense and cut staff or limit service. But the brands that grow — the ones that strengthen franchisee profitability and customer love — are the ones that rethink the game entirely.

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