Striking the Right Balance: How a Franchise Advisory Council Benefits Brands and Franchisees
For franchisors, maintaining brand control and consistency across your network of franchises is a critical factor in your overall business success. However, balancing that control with the valuable input from franchisees can be daunting. A Franchise Advisory Council (FAC) is an invaluable tool to communicate and collaborate with franchisees.
Franchise brands need control of certain systems and processes that affect brand identity, but franchisees often desire autonomy from brand mandates for many reasons, including minimizing costs.
For instance, capital investments or changes to their established business practices can seem unnecessary. Fielding input from multiple franchisees in an unstructured way can quickly become overwhelming to maintain and track for franchisors. A FAC aims to provide a structured way for all parties to communicate and collaborate, receive information productively, and be heard.
With a FAC , franchisors can get necessary feedback from their franchisees while maintaining control of the decision-making power. The collaboration helps brands communicate the necessary policies their franchisees must follow while also enabling franchisees to provide feedback on what’s working best at any given location. The two-way communication is critical for success on both sides of the conversation.
The FAQs About a FAC
What is the role of a FAC?
The role of a FAC is to provide a structured forum for franchise brands to gather feedback and input from their franchisees, while still maintaining control over key business decisions. Through the FAC, the brand can solicit perspectives and ideas from franchisees, tapping into their experience and insights. This allows the brand to benefit from franchisee ideas and innovation as well as better understand its network of franchises.
How does a FAC benefit franchisors?
To start, a FAC helps franchisors by gathering valuable feedback and tapping into firsthand experiences with customers and other elements at the franchisee level. The feedback can help with product development, operational improvements, and decision-making at the brand level. The FAC also helps the brand maintain brand control and establish policies over critical aspects of the business, such as cybersecurity, broadband technology requirements, marketing initiatives, and digital menu boards and digital signage. This helps the brand ensure consistency and protect its reputation across the franchise network. Additionally, the feedback can help with product development, operational improvements, and decision-making at the brand level.
Establishing this type of council allows the franchisees to feel heard and their contributions to be recognized. They will then be more likely to adopt the final decisions from the franchisor. It will foster stronger, more productive relationships between the two parties. It could also prevent franchisee resistance to some extent by giving franchisees a structured avenue to provide input.
Franchisee buy-in resulting from FAC discussions also promotes system-wide uniformity and supports the franchisor’s ability to maintain consistent branding, customer experiences, and operational standards across locations—all of which can be crucial for a brand’s success and reputation. By ensuring brand control, a FAC can contribute to the franchisor’s overall profitability and growth over time.
How does a FAC benefit franchisees?
For some franchisees, operating a franchise might be their first venture into business management and ownership. A FAC offers a platform to provide feedback to the brand. It allows franchisees the ability to share their background and experience in the brand with the franchisor. By providing a forum for franchisees to share their experiences and insights, a FAC can help identify areas for improvement in the franchise system, leading to better operational efficiency and profitability in their stores or restaurants.
FACs also provide franchisees with access to valuable expertise and resources, such as technology recommendations, business best practices, and marketing programs.
Consistency and uniformity across the brand do not only benefit franchisors. They also benefit franchisees because customers expect specific products and a certain experience from brands. Franchisees must be able to deliver on the expected brand experience.
While a FAC would not give franchisees direct voting or decision-making power, it does provide them with a structured channel to share their feedback and perspectives with the brand. This gives them a voice in decisions that will ultimately impact their business.
Franchisors may want to invest and implement broadband networks or other technology. A FAC could communicate and demonstrate the long-term benefits and eventual cost savings these types of investments can represent for the franchisees.
A properly functioning FAC will balance franchisee input with brand control and direction, helping to strengthen the overall franchise system and benefitting the franchisees by supporting the brand’s growth, reputation, and long-term success.
How should a FAC be structured?
The brand itself must create and establish the FAC, and lead and facilitate its meetings. A designated brand representative should be in contact with franchisees and present at meetings.
The FAC should include representation across franchisees, depending on the number of franchisees and quantity of franchise locations. FAC members could be elected or appointed to ensure a diverse range of perspectives. The franchisee FAC representative roles and terms must also be rotated to ensure that new perspectives are being heard for larger franchise networks.
The FAC should also have regularly scheduled meetings—perhaps quarterly—to foster ongoing and open dialogue between the franchisees and the brand. These meetings could be in-person or virtual with opportunities for the franchisees to submit ideas for the agenda.
Brand transparency about how it plans to use the ideas and other feedback gathered at these meetings should be shared upfront. Franchisors must communicate that the input is valued and will be considered, even if ultimately not all ideas result in changes or new initiatives.
While the FAC is a forum for franchisee input, it should not include franchisee voting on decisions that would impact the overall brand. The brand must retain the final say on critical issues.
How Hughes Helps Franchises
Hughes understands success depends upon a consistent, superior customer experience in the competitive franchise market. Supporting the brand requires that franchisees and franchise locations deliver the same positive experience. Hughes offers comprehensive services such as managed cybersecurity, digital signage, and managed network services that help strengthen operations and create robust customer experiences.
Learn more about how Hughes empowers franchises and brands.