How to Find Franchise Owners to Sell To

Selling to franchise owners has a built-in multiplier. A franchisee who owns twelve locations can sign once for all twelve. And unlike most private business owners, franchisees are documented in a public place: the franchise disclosure document that every US franchisor has to give prospective buyers.

Item 20 is the list you want

Under the FTC's Franchise Rule, a franchisor's disclosure document, the FDD, has 23 sections called Items. Item 20 covers outlets, and it has to list current franchisees with the address and phone number of each outlet.

That gives you, for any franchise brand, the people who own its locations. Group the list by owner name and you can see who runs one store and who runs twenty.

Item 20 of a franchise disclosure document lists every outlet. Group it by owner to find multi-unit operators.

Where to get FDDs

Franchisors give their FDD to prospective franchisees, but some states that register franchises also publish registered FDDs online:

FDDs are long PDFs, and Item 20 sits near the end, usually as tables followed by a list of franchisees as an exhibit.

Check what the brand controls first

Franchisors often require their franchisees to use approved suppliers for certain categories: equipment, ingredients, point of sale, branded materials, sometimes software. For those, the franchisor is your real buyer, and pitching franchisees directly wastes everyone's time. The FDD itself tells you this. Item 8 covers restrictions on sources of products and services.

Focus on multi-unit owners

Single-unit owners are numerous and often run the store themselves. Multi-unit owners, sometimes running dozens of locations across several brands, have office staff, bigger budgets and a strong interest in anything that works across all their sites. They're harder to reach and worth much more.

Many large multi-unit operators run a company with its own name and website, separate from the brands they operate. Searching the owner name from Item 20 usually finds it.

What to say

Hi [Name], I understand [your company] operates [number] [brand] locations in [region]. We work with multi-unit [brand category] operators on [what you do], so one setup covers every location. [A proof point you can back up.] Would it be worth a short call to see if it fits your locations?

Mention the brand and the number of locations. It shows you've done the homework and that you're thinking about their whole operation.

Doing it with ManyPI

Disclosure: ManyPI is our product.

Pull the Item 20 franchisee list from a registered FDD, import it into ManyPI, and the agent finds each owner's company website and email, checking every address against the receiving mail server before a campaign can use it. Or describe the list in a sentence, for example "multi-unit franchise operators in Texas running quick-service restaurant brands, with the owner's email", and the agent researches it on the live web. Sequences go out from your own inbox and stop when someone replies. The lead generation page covers the setup, and our guide to gyms and fitness studios covers one franchise-heavy market in detail.

A franchisee search typed into the ManyPI agent.

A limit to keep in mind: Item 20 lists franchisees as of the FDD's date, and most FDDs are updated once a year. Ownership changes in between, so confirm the owner before a big campaign.