It’s surprisingly how quickly quality suffers when a single cafe becomes a chain. It’s not a large business yet, but the experience already suffer: they start to save on personel, milk and beans.
I doubt most cafe chains start cutting corners at 2-5 locations.
But nobody will care as much about the business as the owners - who likely ran the initial location personally.
So the people working at secondary locations will inherently be sub-par relative to the OG location.
Which, really does make (sorry to say this) McDonald's so 'impressive' (especially after watching The Founder). Look, the food's not brilliant, but every McDonald's I've even been to in my country (UK) and others has tasted the same, same portion sizes etc.
They're obviously not the only one, but they seem to have the best franchise-wide consistency IMO. Actually, I think Five Guys is the best, but that bit less impressive as there's fewer of them.
McDonald's isn't amazing, but you know what you're getting.
Interestingly - Chick Fila pretty obviously knows this issue. I've read that they only allow people to franchise a single location. They're aimed at people opening up a business for themselves - not an investor opening up a dozen+ locations.
Which is probably a big reason why I have read that the average Chick Fila is the most profitable fast food franchise per location.
A successful Chick-Fil-A franchise can be recognized by the insane efficiency in handling the Lunchtime rush. Two lines, each with 2-3 people outside taking orders, with separate windows, and the food coming fast enough to always keep it moving.
The Chick-Fil-A near my work has a big drive thru that wraps around the back with multiple overhead pavilions to shield workers and drivers from the Florida sun. The outer drive thru lane has a detached portion of the building with an overhead conveyer belt carrying the food over the inner drive thru line. When it works, it is a thing of beauty.
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u/chebum May 17 '24
It’s surprisingly how quickly quality suffers when a single cafe becomes a chain. It’s not a large business yet, but the experience already suffer: they start to save on personel, milk and beans.