What If Local Impact Became a Measure of Franchise Growth?

By Tam Goldsmith

Unit count shows how far a franchise has spread. Local impact shows what that growth actually created.

Franchising measures growth in units, territories and system sales. Tam Goldsmith looks at several unusual franchise models and asks whether the effect they have on their local communities deserves a place on the scorecard too.

Franchising is very good at measuring growth. We count new openings, territories awarded, system sales, countries entered and development agreements signed. These numbers matter because they tell us whether a network is expanding and whether people are prepared to invest their own money in it.

What they don't tell us is what happened in the community when the franchise arrived. Did it create good local jobs? Did somebody build a valuable business? Did an employee eventually become an owner? Did the franchise provide a service people genuinely needed, and was the community any better off five years after the opening?

Those questions are harder to fit into a league table, but some lesser-known franchise organisations are making a convincing case for asking them.

SmartStart is growing something other than unit count

South Africa's SmartStart is a particularly interesting example because its model makes the usual definition of franchise growth feel rather narrow.

SmartStart uses a social-franchise approach to expand access to early childhood education, particularly in communities where access to quality early learning can be limited. The organisation says its network reaches around 160,000 children every week across all nine South African provinces. It has also enabled more than 25,000 people, predominantly women, to run early-learning enterprises.

There are two forms of growth happening there. More children are gaining access to early education, while people within their communities are being given an opportunity to operate a local enterprise. Neither fits neatly into the way we usually rank franchise systems, yet both are tangible outcomes of expanding the network.

That matters because SmartStart isn't simply running a national programme from a central office. It has developed systems that allow services to be delivered locally and repeatedly by thousands of people. Replication, training, standards and local operators are doing much of the work that franchise systems are designed to do.

If we only asked how many conventional units SmartStart opened last year, we would miss much of the point.

A charity in Ohio has become a franchisee

GentleBrook presents an entirely different version of community-led franchise growth. The Ohio nonprofit supports people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, older adults and the wider community, and in 2026 it made an unusual commercial decision: it became a franchisee.

The organisation has taken on a Snapology franchise, a children's education business providing hands-on STEAM learning through activities including robotics and play. GentleBrook plans to offer the programmes to local children and families, while adapting some activities for people already supported by the organisation.

There is also a commercial reason for doing it. Income generated through the franchise can contribute to GentleBrook's wider nonprofit work, giving the organisation another revenue source alongside more traditional funding.

That makes GentleBrook interesting well beyond children's education. Nonprofits and charities are rarely discussed as potential franchisees, despite many having strong community relationships, local knowledge and an obvious reason to remain invested in the places where they operate.

It does not follow that charities should suddenly start buying franchises. The economics have to work, management still has to perform and the franchise has to suit the organisation. A poorly performing business will not become a good investment because its owner happens to have a worthy purpose.

If GentleBrook can make the economics work, however, it raises a fascinating possibility. A franchise could become a tool that helps a community organisation generate some of the money required to fund its own work.

Upbeat Clean has to prove purpose can travel

In Britain, Upbeat Clean is attempting something different again. The commercial cleaning social enterprise grew from the work of Upbeat Communities and creates employment opportunities for people who have arrived in Britain as refugees or seeking asylum.

Cleaning itself is one of franchising's most established service categories. Customers need the work done repeatedly, the service can be systemised and an operator does not need an expensive high-street location to build a local customer base.

Upbeat Clean's challenge is more complicated because it isn't simply trying to replicate the cleaning operation. It also needs to replicate the employment model and standards that give the business its wider purpose.

The organisation has begun franchising, with its first franchise launched in Tees Valley through another local charitable organisation. Its plans to work with charities in other cities will test whether something built around local relationships can retain those qualities as it expands.

That is worth watching. A cleaning process can be written into a manual and scheduling can be handled by software. Creating good employment opportunities for people who may face significant barriers to work requires more from the local operator.

If Upbeat Clean eventually has 20 or 50 territories, the number of franchises will tell us how far the business has travelled. The number of people moved into sustained employment will tell us whether the model itself travelled with it.

Growth is easy to celebrate before we know whether it worked

None of this means unit growth should become unfashionable. Opening and supporting a large franchise network is difficult, and a healthy development pipeline can be evidence of a strong business.

The problem comes when expansion itself becomes proof that the model is successful.

A franchise system can add 100 locations because it is very good at recruiting franchisees. That does not automatically tell us whether those owners will still be operating in five years, whether they are earning an adequate return or whether their businesses have become valuable assets.

Another system might open 30 locations, retain almost every owner, develop employees into franchisees and help successful operators acquire second and third units. The first system would probably win the growth headline, even though the second may have created considerably more durable value.

Community impact cannot be used to disguise poor economics either. If a franchisee invests their savings and works long hours for an inadequate return, the model has a problem regardless of how many community initiatives appear in the annual report.

A more useful definition of franchise growth would therefore measure commercial performance and local impact together.

The franchise scorecard could tell us much more

The industry already collects enormous amounts of data. Adding a few measures that tell us what happens after a franchise opens should not be impossible.

Franchisee survival after five and ten years would be a useful place to begin. So would the number of first-time business owners entering a system, employees progressing into franchise ownership, local jobs created and existing franchisees opening additional locations.

Different sectors could then add measures that make sense for their businesses. SmartStart can count children receiving early education and local people operating early-learning enterprises. Upbeat Clean can measure sustained employment created through its network. An aged-care franchise might measure people supported and carers trained, while a children's activity franchise could report participation and progression.

These numbers do not need to replace sales or profit. They make those figures more meaningful by showing what the growth actually produced.

There is one number I would particularly like to see

If franchising is serious about its claim to create business owners, we should know more about whether those owners are actually building wealth.

The industry talks constantly about the initial franchise investment but surprisingly little about the financial position of the person who made that investment five or ten years later. Whether the franchisee has built equity, generated enough cash to acquire another unit or eventually sold the business for more than they invested tells us something important about the quality of the opportunity.

It also happens to be a form of community impact.

A successful franchisee does not need to run a charitable programme to contribute locally. Someone who builds a profitable business, employs 20 people, develops managers, uses local suppliers and eventually owns an asset with meaningful value has already created an economic effect beyond the walls of the business.

If an employee within that business eventually becomes an owner themselves, the effect goes further.

Those outcomes are less visible than a ribbon cutting, but they may be a better indication of whether franchise growth is working.

Perhaps local impact belongs on the growth table

SmartStart, GentleBrook with Snapology and Upbeat Clean are interesting because their models make local outcomes particularly easy to see. Children educated, local enterprises created, nonprofit income generated and employment opportunities provided are central to what these organisations are trying to achieve.

Most franchises will not have such an explicit social purpose, nor do they need one. A well-run restaurant, cleaning company, gym, retailer or home-services business can have a substantial local impact simply by creating a profitable locally owned company that lasts.

That is why measuring local impact shouldn't become another CSR exercise. It should be part of understanding whether a franchise system is creating good businesses.

We should still celebrate the 100th opening and the new country agreement. But alongside the photographs and development numbers, it would be useful to know how many owners are still succeeding, how many people have built careers inside those businesses and whether some of the wealth created by the network has remained in the communities that helped create it.

Unit count tells us how far a franchise has spread. Local impact might tell us how well it has grown.

What We Can Learn From This

Franchisors should begin tracking a small set of local outcomes alongside their conventional growth measures, starting with franchisee longevity, local employment, first-time ownership and progression from employee to franchisee. Systems with a specific social purpose can add measures relevant to the service they provide, but those results must sit alongside healthy franchisee returns rather than compensate for weak economics. Prospective franchisees and investors should also ask what happens to owners five and ten years after joining a system, not simply how quickly the network is expanding. Over time, the franchise brands able to demonstrate both strong businesses and meaningful local outcomes may give us a much better definition of successful growth.

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