You are a restaurant owner-operator.
You’ve been running your restaurant, Sam’s Pub, for almost ten years now, and you’re so proud of what you’ve built. You’ve hired a great staff, and you pay them fairly. You’ve developed a menu with items that use local fresh ingredients, that can be prepared quickly, and that customers enjoy.
But hell, running a restaurant is exhausting. You got into this business ’cause you love food, but you spend all of your time on people problems and money problems. The farm that supplies your chicken is closing to become a subdivision. Your social media ads cost too much time and require too much effort. Your head chef just accepted an offer at a prestigious steakhouse.
Fuck it, let’s become an Applebee’s franchise.
There’s MBAs in Glendale to manage the menu, the ads, and the decor.
Customers don’t appreciate the difference between your celery salt chicken thighs (with chicken from Alexandra!), and Sysco’s chicken fingers (with chicken from Illinois!).
Paying employees a good wage was kind of your thing, but that’s been tough especially since the pandemic. Applebees’ name recognition might bring in more tips to cover the difference?
There’s a few ways this might go badly.
Applebee’s nationwide lettuce supplier might have another listeria problem. Supply chain problems and the resulting diarrhea outbreaks are bad for business!
Corporate might raise the franchise fees. They’re already padding the margins on the mandatory supplies. A predictable, flat monthly fee was too good to be true.
The head of market research at corporate might resign because they’re worried that Applebee’s Inc. has a 10% chance of destroying humanity.