Why Do We Still Build Franchises Like It's 1995?

By Sean Goldsmith

Franchising has embraced technology, but has the business model itself really changed?

Artificial intelligence is changing almost every industry, yet many franchise systems still operate much as they did decades ago. The question isn't whether technology is moving fast enough. It's whether franchising is moving with it.

There's something about franchising that I've never quite understood. We love talking about innovation. Every conference promises the next big thing, every exhibition floor is packed with software companies claiming they'll transform operations, and hardly a week goes by without someone explaining how artificial intelligence is about to change everything. Yet when you strip away the shiny technology and look at how many franchise systems actually operate, I'm not sure we've changed as much as we'd like to believe.

In many cases, we've simply taken yesterday's business model and plugged today's technology into it. The filing cabinets have become cloud storage, the operations manuals have moved online and spreadsheets have turned into dashboards, but the thinking underneath often feels remarkably familiar. Franchisees are still recruited in much the same way. Support is still structured around processes designed decades ago. Compliance is still treated as a scheduled event instead of something that could happen continuously through better data. We've modernised the packaging without seriously questioning what's inside it.

That's why I keep coming back to one question.

If someone invented franchising today, knowing everything we now know about technology, customer behaviour and how people want to work, would they honestly build it the same way?

I don't think they would.

I doubt they'd insist that every new operator commits to large premises before fully understanding local demand. I doubt they'd expect support teams to spend so much time travelling when real-time operational data is available every minute of every day. I doubt they'd produce static operating manuals that are updated once or twice a year when intelligent systems can now evolve constantly as businesses learn more about their customers. None of those ideas sounded unreasonable thirty years ago, but the world has changed dramatically since then and franchising hasn't always kept pace.

Now, before anyone thinks this is an attack on the franchise model, it really isn't. Quite the opposite. Franchising remains one of the most successful ways ever created to scale a business because its foundations are incredibly strong. Consistency matters. Systems matter. Brand standards matter. Customers still expect the same experience whether they're buying a coffee in London, getting a haircut in Dubai or ordering dinner in Sydney. Those principles have stood the test of time for good reason.

What I think deserves far more scrutiny is how we deliver them.

Almost every other industry has spent the last decade redesigning itself around technology rather than simply adding technology to existing processes. Banks have become digital businesses. Retailers sell around the world without needing a shop on every high street. Hotels use predictive data to understand demand before guests even arrive. Healthcare providers increasingly monitor patients remotely instead of waiting for problems to develop. Those industries haven't simply adopted new software. They've reimagined the way they operate.

Franchising, by comparison, often feels as though it's still asking yesterday's questions with today's tools.

Supporters of the traditional model would quite rightly point out that franchising is ultimately a relationship business, and they're absolutely right. A great franchise business consultant will always notice things that no dashboard can. Trust, experience and honest conversations cannot be replaced by artificial intelligence, and nor should they be. The future of franchising isn't about removing people from the equation.

It's about removing everything that stops people doing their best work.

Imagine support teams spending less time checking reports because the reports create themselves. Imagine training programmes that adapt automatically to the strengths and weaknesses of each franchisee instead of treating everyone exactly the same. Imagine identifying operational problems before franchisees even realise they're developing because technology has spotted patterns that would otherwise remain hidden for months. None of that replaces relationships. It gives people more time to build better ones.

The interesting thing is that very little of this is futuristic anymore. Most of the technology already exists. What's holding many businesses back isn't software. It's habit. Successful organisations develop routines, and over time those routines become accepted as the only way things can be done. Eventually someone asks why a particular process exists, and the answer is almost always the same: because that's how we've always done it.

I've heard that sentence in enough franchise businesses to know it's often spoken with the very best intentions. Nobody is trying to resist progress. They're simply protecting a system that has worked well for years. The problem is that what worked brilliantly in 1995 isn't automatically the best answer in 2026, particularly when customers, employees and technology have all changed beyond recognition.

Perhaps that's why I think the biggest opportunity facing franchising isn't artificial intelligence at all.

It's curiosity.

The brands that lead the next generation won't necessarily be the ones with the biggest technology budgets or the flashiest software demonstrations. They'll be the ones willing to question the assumptions everyone else has stopped questioning. They'll rethink recruitment, training, support, compliance and operations from the ground up instead of simply layering more technology onto processes that were designed for another era.

Because if there's one thing history keeps teaching us, it's that industries rarely get disrupted by people using old ideas more efficiently.

They get disrupted by people brave enough to ask whether those old ideas still make sense in the first place.

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