The StartupJournal.com, The Wall Street Journal's Center for Entrepreneurs online, recently came to us for a list of 25 Franchise High Performers.

This list, pulled from our database of thousands of systems, is different from others in that these systems were not chosen based solely on one criteria such as unit growth, but on multiple objective criteria to highlight a high level of system performance. For instance, these systems are:

• well established
• have a comparatively large number of units
• have been consistently profitable over the years
• have a lower than average turnover rate
• have a low rate of litigation (cases per 1,000 franchised units)

The entire detailed methodology can be found on the StartupJournal.com site.

We have received excellent feedback about this list, most of which is asking: what makes a high performer? What do these systems look like as a group? Here are the averages from that table:

Additionally, eight (8) of the systems had some internal financing programs and eleven (11) of them are listed on the FranchiseRegistry.com.

Finally, to give more details about these 25 systems individually, we created a special Franchise Systems High Performers Snapshot Report. Designed to help prospective franchisees, these reports give a snapshot of some of the important information needed to evaluate a franchise system. A more complete profile of a system can be found in our System Profile Reports.