The Franchisee agrees to all this brand recognition, free advertising, free deliveries of food for them to sell, and so on. But, and its a big but, they have to be 100% independent from the mother company once the "kickstart" has ended. This means that the business has to be very frugal with its spending, it has to cut wages, it has to cut the size of the restaurant down, it has to start switching employees out to the extent where full time waiters can only be working 2-3 days a week, and still get paid less than a part-time employee. The Company is running at a constant loss, so workers working for them start having to be creative, they often end up working 2, 3 even 4 jobs on top of being a waiter for the franchise, which for anyone whose juggled 5 jobs, it is impractical to have those jobs AND a social life.
I won't give names to the franchise where i work but basically on the system, the automated system it runs as it should on paper it should work. We have Hosts, Server Assistants, Servers, Cleaners, BOH and Managers, we have everyone laid out the way it should, but because of the fact the company is always running at a constant loss, you end up having 2 waiters for a 50 customer restaurant and only 1 assistant, who needs to be guaranteed a break as well as any other company benefits. That assistant has to cover the work of the Host, the Cleaner, the server and even sometimes the managers, I've seen managers having to cut their own hours down just so that they can actually run the store properly and pay their workers.
Franchises are really popular with Free marketers, because well if the franchise doesn't manage itself properly then it won't survive in the marketplace, however they do and yet don't. They scrape by on the absolute bare minimums needed, and from what they make they pay a fee to the mother company, so that's an extra fee on top of that, a fee that a lot of the time isn't even covered in the price of the food so the franchise has to work with an accountant which is even more money. So HOW do these franchises keep the mother company afloat? or the better question is WHY? because they know they have workers that they have to guarantee money to, to feed their kids, have a social life, pay for college, etc. They balance the books and get nothing in return, no profits, nothing. A lot of franchises ending up lowing their targets to something they already achieve so they can get a pat on the back from the mother company, they still don't get any help but the recognition helps keep them afloat. I've seen perfectly nice managers get to the extent of needing a therapist because so much relies on them as human beings and business owners. Franchisers don't seem to understand there are workers, Old and young, black and white, male and female, gay and straight, native and foreign who need the money the company makes but these franchisee's cannot manage in the marketplace, they can survive but there is a difference between lush fields of grass surviving and weeds growing outta a rock surviving.
Both Workers and managers deserve better than these franchises that on paper sound like a great idea but they end up being a short time investment that never takes off the ground. They are kickstarters people love but never leave the ground, they are loved and known brands but their own brand is kicking their ass.