What It Takes to Grow: Lessons From Multi-Unit Franchisees

What It Takes to Grow: Lessons From Multi-Unit Franchisees

Growing from one franchise location to several is more than opening additional units. In our Empire Builders webinar series, multi-unit franchisees shared lessons from their own journeys, including the challenges they encountered and the decisions that helped them move forward. Their experiences highlight how growth requires changes in how an owner thinks about the business, the people supporting it and the capital behind it.

While every operator took a different path, several themes came up repeatedly:

• Have a clear vision for what you are building.
• Understand and master the economics of the first unit before replicating it.
• Build the team and leadership structure ahead of growth.
• Create systems and processes that can work without the owner at the center of everything.
• Understand that every location will have its own market, people and economics.
• Plan for the financial demands of growth, including the cash required between opening and profitability.
• Use financial and operational data to make decisions as the business grows.
• Be willing to slow down, change course or walk away from a location when the numbers do not work.
• Think about the long-term value and eventual endgame of the business.

Taken together, these lessons suggest that scaling is less about simply adding units and more about building an organization capable of supporting them.

Start With a Clear Vision for Growth

Before deciding how quickly to expand, operators need to determine what they are actually trying to build. That might mean two or three locations in a concentrated market, dozens of units across a broader territory or a business designed to eventually operate without the owner.

Art Wrightson, a Club Pilates franchisee, framed the question simply: “Is it one location? Is it 2? Is it 20? Is it 200?”

That decision can influence everything that follows, from market selection and staffing to financing and organizational structure. Charles D’Amico, a Jimmy John’s franchisee, learned that lesson through experience. He eventually operated across multiple markets and noted that, while having 11 locations was valuable, having 11 concentrated in two cities would have created a different operating model.

The point is not that one approach is inherently better. It is that the growth strategy should be intentional.

Master the First Unit Before You Replicate It

Several franchisees emphasized the importance of understanding the economics and operating model of an individual location before trying to reproduce it.

Frank Wetegrove, a Camp Bow Wow franchisee, described his first location as the foundation for everything that followed. “I feel like we completely mastered our first location,” he said, before considering whether he could replicate the process and operate in more than one place at a time.

Antonio McBroom, a Ben & Jerry’s franchisee, made a similar point from a different perspective: giving a business enough time to experience different seasons, establish systems and understand its economics can make the transition to additional units more deliberate.

That does not mean growth always follows a fixed timeline. Opportunities, real estate and market conditions can change the equation. But understanding what makes the first unit work gives an owner a much stronger foundation for deciding what to replicate.

Build the Organization Before You Need It

One of the most consistent themes across the conversations was that the organization has to grow along with the number of locations.

Jiger Patel, a QDOBA franchisee, put it directly: “You got to build a team before you start the growth. You cannot wait till the need arises, and then you start building a team. You're always going to fall behind.”

That can mean hiring or developing managers before a new unit opens, adding regional or district leadership as the portfolio grows and deliberately developing people who can take on more responsibility.

For Wetegrove, the transition from one location to multiple units meant developing people who could effectively be “many me’s” — leaders who could represent the business when he was not there. He emphasized the importance of finding people who are both capable and aligned with the business.

Lisa Schiller, a franchisee with Restore Hyper Wellness and European Wax Center, described a similar evolution, including adding a Director of Operations as her Restore business expanded. The underlying lesson is the same: an owner cannot be the operating system for every location indefinitely.

Culture and Processes Have to Scale, Too

People are only one part of the organizational equation. As businesses grow, the informal knowledge that exists inside a single location needs to become something that can be communicated and repeated.

McBroom found that culture had to move from something people simply understood to something that was documented. Schiller similarly emphasized building culture and processes, developing the team and then repeating that model.

That transition matters because the owner is no longer present for every decision. Expectations around customer experience, leadership, communication and operating standards need to be clear enough that they can travel from one location to another.

Don't Assume Every Location Will Be the Same

Replication does not mean every unit will perform identically.

Matt Croon, a D-BAT franchisee, learned that firsthand when he opened his second location. “Nobody told me they weren't going to be exactly the same,” he said. The two locations served similar customers but differed in revenue mix, customer behavior and management styles.

That distinction is important for multi-unit operators. A strong operating system creates consistency where consistency matters, but it also leaves room to recognize differences in markets, employees, customers, real estate and local economics.

D’Amico experienced the same reality after expanding into different cities. A deal that looks attractive on paper can carry very different operational demands once an owner is responsible for the location.

Understand the Full Economics of Growth

Opening or acquiring another location involves more than the headline purchase price or construction budget. Operators discussed legal and professional fees, deposits, training, travel, payroll, working capital and the period between spending money and generating revenue.

D’Amico offered a particularly vivid example. He acquired three stores for a nominal amount, only to spend roughly $650,000 during the first three months fixing problems. “That's why I got it for a dollar,” he said.

The lesson is not simply to avoid inexpensive acquisitions. It is to understand what the price does — and does not — tell you about the investment required to make a location successful.

McBroom summarized the cash-flow challenge another way: “Cash is king, but cash flow is queen.” Growth can consume significant cash even when the underlying business is healthy, making financial planning an important part of deciding when and how quickly to expand.

Let the Numbers Tell You When to Adjust

As the number of locations increases, operators also need better visibility into what is happening across the portfolio.

Rylan Miller, a Tropical Smoothie Cafe franchisee, described looking closely at daily financial performance, labor and costs rather than relying solely on monthly or quarterly reporting. “The problem with the P&L is they're a lagging indicator,” he explained. By the time an issue appears on a financial statement, an operator may already have spent weeks responding to it.

That same discipline applies to staffing, pricing, marketing and individual-unit performance. Growth creates more data, but it also creates more opportunities for problems to get hidden inside an otherwise healthy portfolio.

Be Willing to Make Difficult Decisions

Not every location will work, and not every growth decision will turn out as expected.

Both McBroom and Miller discussed closing or selling locations that were not producing the economics they needed. McBroom's experience led him to a straightforward conclusion: “When you look at a unit's economics and it doesn't work, it's the right thing to do to pull the plug.”

That can be difficult after an owner has invested significant time, money and energy into a location. But multi-unit growth requires evaluating the portfolio based on what each unit can contribute going forward, not simply on what has already been invested.

Think About the Business Beyond the Next Location

The final recurring theme was that growth eventually changes the owner's role.

At one location, an owner can often compensate for gaps through personal involvement. At five, 10 or 20 locations, that becomes increasingly difficult. The business needs leaders, processes, financial discipline and institutional knowledge that do not depend on one person being everywhere at once.

That also makes long-term planning more important. Several operators discussed building a business with an eventual transition or exit in mind — strengthening leases, documenting processes, developing leaders and asking what would make the business more valuable to the next owner.

Ultimately, the goal of multi-unit growth is not simply to operate more locations. It is to build an organization that can support those locations as they grow.

The operators featured throughout the Empire Builders series took different paths, made different mistakes and grew at different speeds. But the common thread was clear: successful growth requires moving beyond the mindset of running a location and toward the discipline of building a business that can operate, adapt and create value at scale.