We’ve seen this play out many times. The economy takes a dramatic downturn and during the recovery new companies arise with products and services tailored to a more rapidly evolving market. Existing companies try to keep up, and/or their franchisors are reluctant to do the hard work to make the necessary changes. There are many […]
Whenever we undergo a dramatic economic change, there is a lot of movement of capital. In the past 10 years in franchising, we’ve seen a lot of outside investment capital (which I’ll refer to here as PE) move into brand acquisitions. Initially, and for the most part, this was done as one-off acquisitions. More recently, […]
Looking at what’s changed in 2020 because of Covid – and what changes might be permanent – let’s start with the biggest driver of economic activity: consumers. A majority of the more than 2,000 people surveyed by Jones Lang LaSalle said they want to continue working away from the office at least two days a […]
Every crisis creates brand winners and losers. This one is no different. Eventual brand winners will be those that best understood the long-term implications during the crisis and reimagined their businesses from the ground up. I’m not yet prepared to forecast the winners, but I can raise some questions that might help multi-unit operators consider […]
We thought we knew how the end of this first generation of substantial multi-unit expansion was moving into the next generational phase, i.e., a combination of family/investor ownership buyouts, M&A consolidation, and continued expansion within and across brands. But the Covid-19 crisis is showing some initial signs of changing how this next generation of multi-unit […]