Franchises.

A franchise is a written contract giving permission to sell someone else’s product or service in a prescribed manner, over a certain period of time, and in a specified territory. Franchises can be operated as a proprietorship, partnership or corporation.

A franchisee, that can be a person or a group of people, receives the franchise from a parent company, the franchiser, to sell its products or services. The franchise agreement states the duties and rights of both parties. The franchisee agrees to run the business in a certain way. This often includes the name of business, the products or service, and the uniforms of employees. This standardizing means that customers can recognize a business and know what to expect when they buy a product or service from anyone of the franchised businesses.

The franchiser helps the franchisee to get started. Also, the national advertising of the product or service by the parent company serves all the franchiser collects a percentage of sales or an agreed – upon fee from the franchisee each year.

II. Give the terms which mean the following definitions:

1.The person or group of people who have received permission from a company to sell its products or services.

2.A written contract granting permission to sell someone else’s product or service in a prescribed manner, over a certain period of time, and in a specified area.

3.The parent company that grants permission to a person or a group to sell its products or services.

III. Read the Rebecca May’s story and answer the following questions:

1)What is the parent company of the franchisee?

2)Did the franchisee have training before he could be considered for a franchise?

3)Does the franchisee receive marketing and training information from McDonald’s?

4)What kind of person do you have to be running a small business?

Rebecca May: We bught the franchise for a McDonald’s restaurant. The restaurant is in a park five miles outside Leeds. Since that time we have already expanded the seating and now we are looking to expand the restaurant itself. We have to conform to the McDonald’s standards (quality, service, cleanliness and value), of course, but the restaurant is actually our own business. We employ some 75 staff, order and pay for supplies, take care of an maintenance, arrange local marketing and so on. Around a quarter of all McDonald’s 800 UK restaurants are franchised.

Buying this franchise was a big move for us. My husband had to go nine month’s training before we could even be considered for a franchise. All aspects are assessed – food quality and presentation, atmosphere, quality and speed of service, restaurant cleanliness and so on.

We have ongoing dialogue with McDonald’s. A field consultant visits us every two or three weeks, and there are regular meetings with other franchisees to share ideas and experience. We receive marketing and training information from McDonald’s regularly. They also run the training courses but we pay for our staff to attend.

As with any small business, to succeed you have to be flexible and do whatever the contemporary situation requires. On rare occasions when we are short staffed (e.g. lunchtime rush in flu seasons) I serve the customers myself.

Read the text and give the main points of it.