Finding a Great Location For Your Franchise

As a franchisee, you understand what the perfect location is for your type of franchise business is and know exactly what to look for. That’s the easy part! Now, you have to actually go out and find that perfect location.

Obviously, your ideal location depends on the type of franchise business you will be operating. If you will be providing services and do not require high traffic, then an office, warehouse or even your home may be the perfect site. However, if you will be running a restaurant or retail business, you will need to find locations with visibility and high traffic. As you begin to look at specific sites, there are several different types you will likely become familiar with:

• Shopping areas

These serve the community, such as a downtown area that benefits from local office workers or residents. In some cities, these shopping areas also draw tourists or people who live in the suburbs and are attracted to the areas because of entertainment. Yet again, these shopping areas can be very expensive retail areas and often lack sufficient parking for customers. Another aspect to keep in mind is that if most of the traffic comes from office workers, the business hours may be limited into lunchtime and immediately after work. Unless there are other residents in the area, weekends may not be as busy than other locations.

• Malls

Malls are large, usually enclosed shopping centers boasting a diversity of different types of businesses. They are rather wonderful, as they usually service a large area or market and are accessible from major roadways. They attract a large variety of people and consumers all interested in different things and who are all potential customers to your business. Yet, there is a disadvantage: all that traffic usually comes with a high price. The rent is usually very high and you will most likely be required to pay for common fees such as area maintenance, association dues and mall advertising, as well as other charges.

• Neighborhood centers

The neighborhood centers are usually attached with supermarkets, drug stores or other large retailers. They benefit from the variety of other merchants in the center. They draw from the local community and are the type of locations most retailers and restaurateurs look for. The advantage of the neighborhood centers is that while the larger regional centers can have signage and other restrictions, most neighborhood centers offer few of the obstacles often found in mall locations.

• Strip centers

Strip centers are smaller versions of neighborhood centers, usually with three or more stores but without the anchor of a large grocer or drug store.

Most experienced franchisors provide great franchise systems which include location assistance. The franchisors provide their franchisees with the criteria to help them begin their search and will provide them with an area in which to look for locations. Often, franchisors give you the opportunity to find a location and they will assess it for approval. In addition, an experienced real estate broker can be very useful in helping you find locations that meet your franchisor’s criteria. Even where “for rent” signs are not evident, a good real estate broker will know exactly which locations are soon to be empty and will have relationships with landlords that can prove beneficial.

If however, you have to find a location alone, your local chamber of commerce, city engineers, police department and transportation department can provide you with low-cost information on demographics, traffic counts, pedestrian traffic, areas under development and other business drivers in your community. Try determining future development will be occurring. You can do this by visiting the people at city hall, real estate developers and real estate brokers as well as the zoning and planning boards.

In addition, obtain a list of your franchise system’s locations already open or under development in your area. You need to determine where the competition is operating and, when plotting those locations on a map, you can begin to confine your search. Assess the types of centers in which other franchisees are prospering and determine centers in the area with a similar profile.

The process of locating the right site is very time-consuming. Plan on visiting the centers you are evaluating on different days of the week and during different hours of the day. By doing this, you can assess the amount of people to expect. If the perfect location site is not available immediately, talk to your franchisor for either additional assistance or for an extension on the amount of time they have provided you to find a location. If nothing is available, consider asking for a change in market rather than simply accepting a second-rate location.

Finding the perfect location for your franchise business is one of the most important steps in making your franchise a success.

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