International Franchising: Preparation Beats Size

A conversation with Farrah Rose, Head of International Franchising at The Franchising Centre. Interview by Tony Johnston, FranchiseAir.

Farrah Rose has spent 43 years in international franchising. She started as European Franchise Manager for Burger King, did a spell of franchise management for McDonald’s Europe, then built the international franchise strategy for the Burton Group’s fashion brands. Twenty-nine years ago she co-founded The Franchising Centre — one of the first domestic and international franchise consultancies in the UK — where she heads the International Division, working with a team across 76 countries. She has advised well over 300 international brands.

We asked her the questions a franchisor asks when the home market starts to feel small: how do you know you’re ready, how do you choose the first country, and which route in — master franchise, area development, joint venture — actually works? Her answers keep coming back to one theme: the brands that succeed abroad are not the biggest ones, but the best prepared.

From Burger King to 76 countries

Tony: Hello, I’m Tony Johnston of franchiseair.com, authors of franchise software such as Jobs360 and Franchise 360. I’m here today with Farrah Rose, Head of International Franchising for The Franchising Centre, which is www.thefranchisingcentre.com. Hello, Farrah.

Farrah: Hi, Tony. It’s good to be here.

Tony: First things first — obviously we’ve met, Farrah, but the people who are listening may not have done. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background in franchising — and also in dance, if you’ve got ten seconds?

Farrah: I think that might be rather a long story — we’ll leave the dance bit to one side. Thank you, Tony. Yes, I’m one of the founder members of The Franchising Centre. We set up this organisation about 29 years ago, and we were one of the very, very few domestic and international franchise consultancy companies in the UK. My own background goes back to franchising: I started my career in franchising working as European Franchise Manager for Burger King, then from Burger King I did a spot of franchise management for McDonald’s Europe, and then I moved on to Arcadia Group and developed the international franchise development strategy for various Arcadia Group fashion brands — in those days it was called Burton Group. I don’t know whether anyone can remember them or not.

I set up this organisation about 29 years ago, and in the last 29 years — now under a new ownership and management structure, where we have made most of our consultants shareholders and co-owners of the firm — we have grown to be one of the global voices of authority in both domestic and international franchising. The organisation has several divisions. We focus very much on supporting brands who are looking to franchise their businesses in the UK: we give them strategic advice, we help them develop the franchise proposition and the necessary documentation, and then we support them by recruiting franchisees for them.

I head the International Division of The Franchising Centre. Fundamentally I work with British brands who are looking to expand out of the UK into various markets, and international brands who are looking to enter the UK market. I do this with the support of a fantastic team here in the UK and in 76 different countries around the world — so if our client needs any kind of local support in terms of validation of the franchise proposition, market research, marketing data, as well as recruitment of the franchisees, we will be able to provide them with that kind of service. We also have a franchise relationship management arm, where we place non-exec directors on the boards of various companies and offer our time and advisory services on an ad hoc or ongoing basis. We have a software house, where we recommend various software that some of our clients may need to implement within their system — both franchisors and franchisees. We train franchisors and franchisees. And we also have an executive recruitment arm, where we can recruit executives for various clients as and when the need arises.

Do you have to franchise at home first?

Tony: Excellent. So today we’re going to talk about international franchising — which is handy, given your role as Head of International Franchising. My first question is around timing. I guess the first and obvious question is: do you have to be a successful franchise in your home market before you consider international franchising?

Farrah: Not necessarily, Tony, not necessarily. If you take a look at the prerequisites of a successful international franchise expansion, it almost gives you the answer — so let’s take a look at those first. Your concept needs to be stable: fad or fashion really will not last the journey. You need to have a mature operating system that is easily replicable, and someone can be trained in replicating it fairly easily — so flying a rocket to the moon would be very difficult to franchise, but with a sufficient amount of training someone else would be able to replicate that. It also needs to be financially viable when it enters another market, both for the franchisor and the franchisee, bearing in mind local pricing and cost structure. There has to be a degree of parity.

Tony: Sorry to interrupt — I was going to say, what would be the signs that somebody should consider going international?

Farrah: Well, these are some of the pillars. They do need to have a very stable concept. The operating methodology and system need to be very mature and fully developed. These are the assessments they need to do on themselves before they think, “can I go to an international market?” They need to take a look at international bearing in mind whether — with all the impact and all the adjustments and adaptation they need to make to the existing system and the product or services they offer — this venture will be financially viable in another market. Can they find a sufficient number of franchisees? Can they train the franchisees easily? Can they monitor the franchisee on a fairly effective and regular basis? Do they have the right people on board who would support the development of the franchise network in another market?

So fundamentally, when I work with a client, the very first thing I do is a system analysis, to ascertain whether they meet those kinds of criteria before suggesting they should go international. Now, you asked me whether you should be franchising in your domestic market before you can look at international. As I said — based on these criteria, if you have those criteria, it really doesn’t matter whether you’re a franchisor domestically or not. Over the course of the last 43 years that I’ve been involved in international franchising, I’ve probably worked with well over 300, 350 international brands, and quite a lot of them were not actually franchisors in their own domestic market. They like to keep the domestic market for themselves and look at franchising in international markets. So no — the direct answer to your question, and I’ve gone round the long way, is you don’t need to be a domestic franchisor before you start to look at franchising as your growth strategy in foreign markets.

The red flags

Tony: You’ve mentioned what makes a good franchisor internationally. Are there red flags beyond what you’ve mentioned — where you think, oh, that’s not going to work very well?

Farrah: Yeah — and that’s why we do our system analysis, system-slash-gap analysis. Quite often we get people knocking at our door saying: someone from the US, from Qatar, from Saudi, wants to buy my franchise, they’re really, really keen, they’re throwing a lot of money at this, and we’ve been thinking about international franchise development for a period of time. The red flags are exactly the five criteria that I mentioned. Is your concept stable? Will it travel easily to another market? Do you have to incorporate so much adaptation to ensure your product or services or your system is actually implementable in that market — and what is the impact of that on your resources? Are your operating systems sufficiently mature? Do you have the resources to focus on supporting an international franchise network? Is this part of your longer-term strategy?

It’s no good reacting to someone coming knocking at your door. You may not be ready to go. That person may not be the right person or the right franchisee for you, no matter what good words or good chatter they might be giving you. And that country may not necessarily be the right market for you. So there is a considerable amount of pre-entry work that you need to do to ensure that, first of all, you are ready to go. International development is part of a proactive growth strategy — not something you build on a whim or as a knee-jerk reaction.

And fundamentally, international franchise development will be distracting, right? It will take your focus away from the domestic market. Are you in a position to support the impact from a resource standpoint? I’m not just talking about financial resources — I’m talking about human resources too. If you’re looking at entering a market, you will need a lot of market data. You will need people who are committed behind you, to ensure you are properly prepared to enter that market. So the red flags are almost the opposite of everything I said. If you don’t have a stable concept — if your concept is fad or fashion — forget it, it won’t last. If your systems are not mature enough, and the adaptation of the system and the product and services would put a huge amount of pressure on the domestic operation, you’re not ready to go. If there are operational holes and gaps that may not render your role as a franchisor viable, don’t touch it. If you don’t have the resources — mental, human, financial — forget about it. These are some of the key points.

Choosing a market: start with your exit strategy

Tony: That’s an excellent answer. And I’m picking up on something you mentioned there about choice of market — being reactive, you might get a US company come to you. But turning that around: if you’re being proactive and choosing your market, how do you go about identifying a market that would be ideal for your franchising?

Farrah: That, to be honest, is probably a full day of seminars, because there are so many elements of that particular market that you need to take into consideration — but I’m just going to give you a few. The very first thing you need to do is take a look at your exit strategy. What is your exit strategy — if you have one; the majority of companies don’t. But if you do have one: do you want, within the next five to seven years, three to five years, however long, to actually sell and get out? If that is the case, what do you think a buyer would want to see? What would add more value to the value of your company? What would add a huge amount of value is for you to demonstrate to the buyer that your system is resilient enough, and your own strategic vision structured enough, for your brand to be replicated in a variety of different markets — small European markets, large European markets, further-away markets, markets with various kinds of cultural nuances and differences to your domestic market. So that’s important. Many companies don’t have this exit strategy — they might not even consider “what am I going to do in five years’ time?” — although I would want to ask them the question: why haven’t they?

Some of the considerations would obviously be economical. You’re not going to go into a market where GDP is low, people don’t have the buying power, your concept doesn’t sit comfortably, and you have to adapt it so much that you lose the essence of what the concept is all about. You need to take a look at all the various market variables. Price parity is very important. Availability of IT platform — very important. Customer demand and buyer behaviour — extremely important. Legal structure is very important. Availability of candidates with a sufficient amount of net worth to not only acquire the franchise but actually grow the franchise — extremely important. The geopolitical element is becoming more and more important. Supply chain is very, very important for those brands who rely on product supply. I mentioned legal — one of the key elements of legal is availability of your trade name and trademark for registration. Without owning your trade name and trademark, you won’t be able to lease it to a franchisee in a way that lets you implement the various fairly serious clauses of your franchise agreement, for both your protection and the franchisee’s protection. And the franchisee’s protection versus the customer, as well as their own employees, is extremely important. There are quite a lot of elements, and every single element I mentioned I could break down into several more — what do I actually mean when I talk about fiscal, about taxation, about legal, about supply chain, about availability of the staff the franchisee would need to recruit, about repatriating royalties out of the market — is it subject to double taxation? There are quite a number of things you need to bear in mind, and the ones I’ve picked out here are only a few of them. Customer taste, buyer behaviour and disposable income. Demand for your product and services. Political stability and the legal environment. Price parity, tax and the fiscal environment. Your ability to onboard and support franchisees from a distance. How widely IT is used. Supply chain. How acceptable franchising is in that market, and the government’s attitude towards your concept. Availability of credit, and of investors. Geographical spread and population spread. And many, many more. These are all things you take for granted in your domestic market, and every one of them has to be looked at afresh.

But taking a general look: if I was a brand holder and I wanted to go into international markets, my best advice would be — trial it nearer to home. Trial it somewhere where there is parity of business culture and consumer culture, and price parity, and where you can actually reach that market within a few hours’ flight rather than in a different time zone. A lot of our clients tend to enter the southern Irish market, or the Netherlands, as a platform to test the international franchise model. Before you start to throw your hat into — forgive me, for the US listeners: we have a huge amount of respect for the Americas, we have a very close affinity, we obviously speak — some would say — the same language. But the US is a very legally orientated market, with very tough legislation, both from a service and product perspective and from a franchising perspective. And the franchise candidates are extremely discerning. They are very sophisticated. They would probably be slightly less forgiving and more demanding than some of the other European markets. So don’t jump into the US as your first market. Cut your teeth on a closer-to-home market. Make sure you fine-tune and really tweak your international franchise model to suit your system, your people, your concept, your management style, the franchisee and the market, before taking a massive leap right across the globe. Just because someone came knocking at your door will not give you what you need to succeed in international franchise development.

Master franchise, area development or joint venture?

Tony: That’s great information — and as you mentioned beforehand, this could be the subject of a much longer discussion, which I’m sure you’d be happy to have with people if they contacted you. Turning from choice of market, let’s look at the methods people use to go to those markets — master franchise, direct, joint venture, that sort of thing. What’s your take there?

Farrah: Well, there are several methods of international franchise expansion, and you very correctly mentioned quite a few of them. Once again, it very much depends on the market, and it very much depends on the life cycle your brand is in. If you are a first-time international franchisor — you haven’t franchised in your domestic market, and you want to enter, say, the Netherlands or France or wherever — I would say master franchising would probably be completely out of the question, because master franchising, in its essence, has to train someone in how to be a sub-franchisor. If you’ve never franchised before — you’re not franchising in your domestic market and you haven’t franchised in another country — you’re not really an experienced franchisor, therefore you can’t really pass the know-how of how to be a franchisor to someone else in France or Germany or the US. So when you ask “would master franchising suit me?” — I dare say, if you’ve never been a franchisor, no. And if there isn’t a sufficient amount of margin for your franchisee to share with you, master franchising will not work, because you are diluting your income stream.

What I do tend to find a lot is that my clients will use single-territory or single-unit franchising internationally, but only to pilot in another country — because they don’t want to invest their own capital to pilot their concept and their system in that market. But they very quickly switch over to an area development or multi-unit development agreement — which means you take a country such as Sweden or the Netherlands, a smaller country, and you give the right to one entity, against a pre-agreed development schedule over a ten-year period, for that area developer to own and open a number of units or expand into a number of territories. The relationship is direct between the franchisee and the franchisor, and there is an umbrella agreement — the development agreement — that sets out the development schedule. That seems to be the most common way of entering an international market.

Down the line, once the franchisor has franchised in a few countries and gained the experience of being a franchisor, then for subsequent countries — so long as there is a sufficient amount of margin — they may consider master franchising, because now they know how to find a franchisee, how to screen a franchisee, how to onboard, monitor, develop, train, et cetera.

More and more now we find that joint ventures are becoming a fairly common model, where the local entity may actually invest but will rely heavily on the franchisor to help them manage the operation. In larger investment franchises I have come across quite a few situations where the local party invests in setting up the hotel, or the private school, or the university, but they look to the franchisor to manage it — not directly from the UK, obviously; getting the right management team on the ground — but to be responsible for the management of that business under a separate management agreement. So joint ventures are also a viable strategy. But a joint venture relationship within an international environment is a very complex relationship to manage, Tony — and that’s one thing a lot of my clients bit by bit come to realise. It is really difficult to manage a joint venture relationship in another country. Particularly if you then want to take the lessons you’ve learned from that joint venture partnership and implement those strategies and systems through a pure franchise model in other countries — you’ve got to be very careful your joint venture partner doesn’t raise his head and say “50% of your royalty for the future of international growth is mine, because it was through the joint venture activity we conducted that you developed those models.”

Tony: So in a way, the answer is a bit like the choice of market — it depends. A lot depends on the detail, on who you are and what you’re trying to do.

Farrah: Absolutely. Where are you in your development cycle? Is international part of a long-term strategy? Let’s run a financial three-to-five-year projection in the local market to make sure there is a sufficient amount of margin for the sub-franchisee, the master franchisee and the UK franchisor. These are fairly important considerations. But I would say, of the 300, 350 international brands I’ve worked with over 40-odd years, probably about 60 to 70% have been using the area development model — and mind, if you’re going into a country the size of Germany, you may actually have more than one area developer; in France, in Spain, you might have more than one. Probably about 30 to 40% have been using master franchising. And the industry sectors that tend to use master franchising are usually those where the franchisor needs someone — a guardian — placed in the local market to keep a very close eye on the quality standard of the services. Domiciliary care: very important to make sure the sub-franchisee is accurately delivering the service promise of the brand. Anything to do with childcare, child entertainment, child fitness, child development, education — you tend to see a lot of those franchisors wanting a local master franchisee.

Graveyard stories and success stories

Tony: Sure. Now, I’m aware we’re skating over things here, but one way of highlighting how things go in practice would be to look at a few examples. Can you think of examples of good and bad experiences franchisors have had in internationalising — naming no names, obviously?

Farrah: No, absolutely not. I dare say that, sadly, there are probably more graveyard stories than success stories. Fundamentally it’s because they use the upfront fee — this massive, hefty exclusivity fee, which more and more franchisors now need to really justify charging — because they desperately need that upfront fee to finance further development in their own business. So the system is not ready. It’s not robust enough. It cannot be replicated. It has loads of holes in it. And guess what’s going to happen when you implement it in another market? Now you’re actually playing with the future welfare of someone else — and no franchisor has the right to do that. So examples of bad franchise expansion very much focus on a franchisor that isn’t ready to go international.

The second element: I have seen quite a few franchisors go into international markets with the wrong franchisee. They didn’t have a proper franchisee profile, because they don’t understand the market. Developing your business in Doncaster is not the same as developing your business through franchising in New Delhi. Your franchisee profile will be very different. If you’re dealing with an area developer, you’re looking at a major, massive entrepreneur who’s going to be owning maybe 50 to 100 of your units out there — his profile is very different to your local franchisee, or even to your own perception of what you think that franchisee should look like. So: franchisee profile not fully developed, franchisee due diligence not done correctly, choosing the wrong market — because someone came knocking at the door, or it’s just a nice country to go on holiday.

Recently I know of two very, very major franchise brands that utterly shocked me — entering a market in Africa, South Africa, and literally within about three to four months they had to pull out, because they missed the price parity. Sometimes the arrogance of the brand can be a problem: “of course, we are so-and-so, everybody knows us, everybody loves us — the moment we land, everyone is going to queue outside our door and buy our burger, wings, coffee, whatever.” No. Novelty will wear off. Not having a sufficient amount of proper staff. Not adapting to the local culture — and I’m not just talking about local culture from a customer’s point of view, I’m talking about from a staff point of view. The franchisee needs to recruit staff, and the culture the franchisor implements into the franchisee’s business has to be at least to some degree aligned with the labour culture. It isn’t just your behaviour — there is a whole team behind it. So some of the failure stories: using the upfront fee to support a flagging business at home, not choosing the right market, not choosing the right franchisee, underestimating the demands and pressure that international franchisee support will put on your system, your product not travelling that well. Take a look at KFC — the coating they have here in the UK is substantially different to the coating they use in South Africa. You do need to make those kinds of adaptations.

The success stories are exactly the opposite. And I am delighted to say I have several clients, some of which have won the best international franchisor of the year award. How did they get there? When Paul Thompson of Water Babies came knocking at our door some 13, 14 years ago, he only had two franchisees — and they were family friends. How did he grow his business to be such a successful phenomenon of international development? Because he listened to the advice. We advised him in a very grounded, very professional and robust way — we didn’t sell him hot air about “yes, you can jump here and there and everywhere.” He knew his exit strategy. He took the advice properly. He resourced himself with the right people. And he genuinely, genuinely cared — he cared for his team, he cared for his franchisees, he cared for the franchisees’ staff. I remember something Paul Thompson said to me once, which I have used in hundreds of seminars and webinars since. He said: “One day I woke up and I found myself responsible not just for my family, but for two franchisees and their families, and for the two franchisees’ employees and their families.” One hell of a responsible guy — and look at where he is now.

Several other success stories, to be honest — Bread Ahead, I would say, is another one. Again, Matthew Jones started with us; we did a gap analysis, we told him where the gaps were, he took his time, listened to the advice, implemented it, and grew very, very gradually and in a very controlled way. For those that have succeeded in international franchising, success didn’t come easily — but it came because they actually listened to the advice, they took the right advice, and they didn’t allow their own ego to get in the way of “I am so-and-so, therefore I don’t need to do a price parity check with South Africa, because I am such a great franchisor and it has always worked wherever I went.”

How prepared you are

Tony: Heading, unfortunately, towards the end of our chat — I think everybody would agree your experience and advice is truly impressive. I’m going to ask one last question: if you could give people one takeaway, one thought about international franchising — maybe it’s that last one you just made — what would you share?

Farrah: I have always used the same one, because it’s really close to my heart and it’s really true. After more than four decades working with hundreds of brands across dozens of countries, what I have learned is that international franchising is rarely about how big you are — it’s more about how prepared you are.

Tony: That’s a great answer.

Farrah: The brands that succeeded are those with very strong systems, realistic expectations, the flexibility to adapt where necessary, and the discipline to choose the right partner — resist the temptation, choose the right partner rather than simply the first opportunity that came knocking at the door, reacted to, and regretted later.

Tony: Farrah, that is truly impressive. I’m really pleased to talk to you about this.

Farrah: My pleasure.

Tony: Just to recap, you can be contacted at The Franchising Centre, which is www.thefranchisingcentre.com — that’s Farrah Rose. It remains for me to say thank you, Farrah. I’m sure we’ll talk again.

Farrah: It’s absolutely my pleasure. Nice to see you again, Tony.

Tony: Excellent. Bye-bye now.

Farrah: All the very best. Bye-bye.

Recorded over Microsoft Teams on 17 August 2026. Transcript lightly edited for clarity, with details amended at Farrah's request.

Farrah Rose QFP is a founder member, director and Head of International Franchising at The Franchising Centre, supported by a team in 76 countries. Over 43 years in international franchising she has advised more than 300 brands, having begun her career as European Franchise Manager for Burger King before franchise management roles with McDonald's Europe and the Burton Group's fashion brands. She was the first inductee to the European Franchise Federation Hall of Fame in 2023 and sits on its advisory panel, and is Senior Franchise Advisor to the European Bank and the Commonwealth Secretariat. You can also find her on LinkedIn.

Related reading: our conversation with Ken Rostron on development plans · our conversation with Clive Smith on franchise recruitment · why franchise networks stall as they grow