Post title is fairly self-explanatory.
Currently in IB and looking to do something more entrepreneurial in the next ~5 years.
A theme that seems to have come up a number of times is quick service restaurant ("QSR") franchise ownership. My current thinking is to invest in a franchise with a partner (holding preliminary discussions with this person currently, someone who I trust / respect and who has complementary skills to mine).
We have our sights on a chain which offers relatively healthy food options at a decent price point. It is an old family-owned restaurant (40+ years) which has just recently started franchising (last 5 years) and has experienced tremendous growth since.
Ideally, we could source sufficient capital to buy a few existing locations at once (2 - 3) but depending on the timeline, we may not have enough dough to take a bite that big at the start. The alternative is to put up the $300k - $500k to launch a new location for that same chain. I'm not as keen to deal with the logistics of building the spot from scratch, hiring from scratch, etc. but given our constraints it may be the most reasonable option.
Mid-to-long term plan would be to grow it and own multiple locations across (ideally) multiple chains. We won't get to where we want to go with just a couple of stores but from a few other guys I know who currently own franchises, if you can grow to a critical mass, there's good opportunity for decent profitability coupled with a decent lifestyle.
The pitfalls, I think, are relatively obvious - have to deal with minimum wage (or near minimum wage) salary employees, vulnerable to change in food trends, you are ultimately leveraged to the franchisor, cash flow from only one or two locations may not be worth the hassle / risk.
Upsides in my mind are that once the business and processes are up and running and you have a good GM for your locations, it is not a super complicated business to run and you can put it more or less on autopilot. Also relatively easy to duplicate once you figure out the formula. For guys like us, where the goal would be to grow to a relatively good size, there are likely economies of scale from centralizing the more administrative functions.
Does anyone have experience in these, thoughts or interesting resources on the topic? I know roll-ups of franchises are relatively common for Search Funds. That's not exactly what we would do, but generally same concept.
Any feedback or input is appreciated.
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