Can you start a food delivery business without opening your own restaurant space? Can you give tours of senior care centers when no one is allowed in nursing homes? Can you train someone to repair a transmission over Zoom? Can you start an education business while helping your kids with remote learning? These are the sorts of questions that franchises started asking during the pandemic, and when they discovered the answer was “yes, you can,” it didn’t just save them in a pinch—it changed the industry for good.
While millions were stuck at home, or working increasingly undesirable jobs outside the home, franchises were working hard to show they could offer people more freedom and autonomy over their lives. Here, we look at 10 ways the pandemic affected the world of franchising.
1/Women Saw Franchising as an Escape Hatch
During the pandemic, 2.5 million women left the workforce, an exodus that Vice President Kamala Harris called a “national emergency.” Lack of employer flexibility that was frustrating before the pandemic became impossible to contend with when families got stuck at home. But during that time, many women began exploring their options and discovered franchising as an alluring alternative. Women-owned franchises were already on the rise; in the decade leading up to 2019, they had increased by 24%. But in the last two years, interest spiked.
“I feel like there’s been this shift about what you’re not going to take anymore,” says Tamika Franklyn, who educates women and people of color about franchising through her Precision Franchise consultancy in Brooklyn, New York. “People want to follow their passion even more. People who have been working at home have realized how important it is to have that flexibility.”
Franklyn says many women are surprised when they learn about franchising’s options. “I think they’re just unaware about funding,” she says. “They don’t understand that there are over 40 industries.” Megan Allen, market president of FranNet Colorado, has also seen more women calling. They either inquire and
