The Franchise Show 2012

A wealth of franchise opportunities for the disenfranchised.

Well, the 2012 Franchise Show came and went. Though I toyed with buying into either a restaurant chain, an education centre or a mobile bouncy-castle party truck, I thought better of it and decided to hang onto my spare $120,000.

I can barely make my writing deadlines so I can’t quite see myself running a franchise unless it’s into the ground. It takes a certain kind of person to turn a “turn-key” into “turn-a-profit.” It also takes a certain kind of person to sit there patiently for two days while endless potential investors kick the tires of the franchise you’re promoting. It turns out that kind of person is warm, friendly and totally alluring. It’s no coincidence that the franchiser sends out these front line troops to battle it out with your wallet. Every person I spoke with was awesome!

And it didn’t matter that what they said to me seemed totally undoable. 

 

Gene Savage, director of franchise sales for an American restaurant chain called Beef O’Brady’s, told me that they were looking to expand into Mongolia. As you do, when your name is a mixture of Irish and meat. Mongolia? Was he serious? “Oh, I’m serious,” he told me. “A lot of foreigners want the American experience without actually going there.” I guess it’d be perfect for all those Mongolian families sick of eating out at the Yak Yurt. 

 

I was pleasantly surprised to find such a wide array of business opportunities. Tommy Gun’s, a men’s barbershop franchise booth, was manned by four guys, each with hair so thick and lustrous that it was at once inspiring and mocking. Tommy Gun’s aims to deliver the ultimate guy’s haircut experience. Pictures of redbrick salons housing $50,000 worth of red leather barber chairs showed men leaning back, heads encased in hot towels, about to get the closest shave of their lives. Unlike, say, the old-time Mafioso who thought they were about to get the same deal but ended up being Tommy-gunned to death. Those old Dons paid the ultimate price instead of the $300,000 needed to get in on some TG action. 

 

Then there was the mobile maid service called Messy Maid, a name I still can’t get my head around. Messy Maid? That’s right up there with Lyin’ Lawyer. Surely there were better names than that, I asked. “Yes, there were. Loads. And they were all taken,” said Barry Driedger, VP of franchise development. He went on, “So we decided to deconstruct the whole maid thing.” I had no idea the whole maid thing needed deconstructing. His card shows a harried maid holding a dripping mop next to an overturned bucket creating a big spill. If that’s their idea of a maid then I have my own. She’s called my eighteen-year-old daughter. 

 

I checked out Games 2U, which requires you to buy a truck and trailer combo that delivers games like Laser Tag, Foam Party and human-sized Hamster Balls. You show up at birthday parties, office parties and I guess, downsizing parties, if you want to take the sting out of getting laid off. “Johnson! You’re fired! But first, climb into this huge plastic hamster ball and roll around the park while you’re crying.” I loitered near their booth just to hear them say, “Oh, they love the big balls!”

 

I spoke with Fresh Slice Pizza, Oxford Learning Centres, Opa Greek Food, Clean Air Yard Care and Instant Imprints, all intriguing and impressive. But my favourite booth was Revenue Canada. They were handing out ultra-sexy pamphlets with titles like, “Will you do the job for cash?”, “GST/HST Rulings” and “What you should know about audits.” The only break the girls manning the booth got was when Americans asked them how to get a RevCan franchise. Considering how powerless and crushed we all feel under RevCan’s beady eye, I’m thinking it would be less of a franchise and more of a disenfranchise.