Ever ask a zee how they feel about holidays? Just what goes through the mind of an average person versus the franchisee owner when “holiday” is discussed? Ever wonder how a zor spends their holiday? In the Americas, the word is “vacation”. Every paid worker spends their year planning and imagining the relief those two or three weeks truly bring to the family and one’s own inner balance of family vs work vs quality of life. In Europe, it’s holiday and it’s twice as long as the Americas because most Euro holiday packages are four to six weeks. The European has come to expect holiday and due to the lack of opportunity, in some respects holiday is one’s privilege.
In the thinking of the blue collar or the white collar or the Euro or anyone else who has never truly owned and run a business, let alone a franchised business, there is no reference or association as to what a holiday brings to a zee. Their impression is that a small business owner who owns a high-profile franchise operation must already be rich. They do not know that the life savings and the mountain of debt needed to serve them their 15 second servings of fast food heart attack will never allow me to enjoy another holiday. The reference of outlay at the onset of such purchase of franchises is referred to “sunk costs”. Oh how bloody true is that depiction!
Here are just a few interesting problems of the zee during holiday:
- Workers are off, zee gets to stay and keep the doors open (bills don’t do holidays)
- Workers are off, doors have to stay open, otherwise the revenue of the holiday revelers will be lost
- If it’s a day in which stores are closed due to law, I’ll stay and catch up on books and admin as the workers aren’t in
- If it’s a party day where retail is open, I get to stay and help the skeleton shift (who bitch and moan that they have to work)
- Leading up to the holiday, everyone leaves early, meaning I get to stick around to make sure everything is set because I own this mess
- And finally, the schedules are all mine to own and fix and work with due to the fact that no one owns anything but me (the R word means nothing to the hourly worker)
And last but not least, I can visualize and imagine the wonderful times the zor is having attending special events as grand marshall (the honor and respect he purchased with my life savings and ongoing royalty abuses). After all, his ad fund, his marketing fund, his kickbacks from vendors and his admin, his legal support are all coming from the money I gave, will give him and am generating while working over this glorious holiday!
Bloody
Bloody Franchise 
Bloody’s comments on Labor Day are fitting.
Labor Day is a celebration of the American Worker who has fought hard and long for the right to fair wages and a decent life for himself and his family.
Over the years, Labor Day has changed to mark the end of summer and the start of the football season and the last long weekend in which to travel with the family for fun and recreation.
Is is therefore fitting to point out that millions of franchise owners, the franchisees, especially in the QSR sector, will be working in their branded businesses today to make it a happy Labor Day for others while the owners of the franchise systems, the franchisors, are fat and happy and free to jet to exotic places to enjoy the last long weekend of the summer.
The hybrid legal relationship of the franchisee-franchisor, in which the franchisee, who owns all of the hard assets, takes all of the risk for operating the physical chain unit(s) to produce those gross sales for himself and for the franchisor (and the investors in the franchisor) has created a new kind of business model under Capitalism.
This new model has some ugly realities that have been hidden from that portion of the public who buy franchises. The general public, unfortunately, and generally, has no idea that these famous brand franchised units that they eat in are owned by independent small business men who are merely resources, under law and regulatory policy, to perpetuate the images of the BRANDs and to grow THEIR profits. Many franchisees realize no profits whatsoever and are indentured by the contracts they have signed for ten and fifteen years, if they can’t sell their businesses, even at a “wash.”
Franchising has been so DURABLE and has grown so quickly in our economy because Franchisors can escape the costs of providing fair labor and work benefits such as health insurance and the costs of building and operating physical units such as wages and Workmen’s Compensation .
ALL of the expenses and taxes are the responsibility of the franchisees at the bottom of the pyramid who provide the profits for those at the top of the pyramid, even as they fail in great numbers but are churned to new owners to perpetuate the visibility of the brand in the economy.
How else could the CEO of McDonald’s make $6,000 an hour and the stock holders do so well? There is no doubt that McDonald’s is an exceptional franchisor and that all franchisors want to duplicate their success and become millionaires.
Why, then! don’t franchisors disclose the UNIT performance statistics of their systems to new buyers and to their investors? Could franchising grow as much if new buyers of franchises really knew the odds of profitability and failure before they signed the unilateral and unbargained franchise agreements?
Franchising doesn’t produce truly good jobs in our economy, and should it be growing in terms of “new job numbers” for government? What are the social costs?
Happy Labor Day!
Happy Labor Day! .
Absolutely agree. Franchisees are stuck in the system working the business while all employees and the franchisor sit at home with their families. To top it off we ususally work harder and make less net money at the same time.
Our same concerns are found at http://jefflefler.wordpress.com