February 2014
| Business World Magazine | 11
franchisees can open a QSR location for
$325,000 (compared to around $650,000
for full service restaurant). CEO Sam Ballas
told us they began researching and prototyp-
ing this model a few years ago in an effort to
offer less expensive multi-unit opportunities
for franchisees and to offset a projected real
estate shortage.
“We’ve been closely
studying real estate in the
past years and see a real
crunch coming in 2014
and 2015,” Ballas said.
“We’re just not going to
be able to find the 4,000
foot space that the food
sector is going to need.”
On the flip side, pest
extermination franchise
Truly Nolen actually in-
creased its cost of entry
to ensure new franchisees
are properly capitalized
for quick success.
“We found that people who have the
money to hire an extra salesperson right out
of the gate perform better,” said Scott Nolen
of Truly Nolen. “We also insist franchisees
have newer vehicles because old ones cause
distractions and service breakdowns, which
affects profitability in the long run.”
Although the tightness of the lending
landscape has leveled off, heightened lender
expectations are here to stay. Along these
lines, Weed Man recently launched an inter-
nal financing program to help qualified fran-
chisees get into the system.
“When we were talking to candidates,
we’d get them all the way down in the award-
ing process and we thought they were a good
fit, and they’d come back and say we couldn’t
get the money from the bank. These were re-
ally strong candidates,” said Jennifer Lemcke,
Weed Man’s chief operating officer.
