When considering how much buying a pet or dog walking franchise will cost you, the biggest part of that expense is usually the Franchise Fee.
So, what exactly is the Franchise Fee?
In short, it's your investment in helping ensure you don't go out of business.
More specifically, any great franchisor will have years of experience in developing their systems and processes to make sure they work before they offer their business as a franchise. Because they've already made mistakes and now know how to avoid them, they can help ensure you don't make the same ones.
And that's what the franchise fee buys you: it's the experience of someone else who can help you succeed as quickly as possible.
Of course, there are lots of things included in that "experience", such as
- proven systems and processes
- discounts or "buying power" for equipment
- software/technology
- manuals, forms, documentation
- support (phone, in-person, classroom, field training, etc)
- marketing materials (trademarked logo, print, web, etc)
- guidance to help you avoid mistakes
For some dog walking and pet franchises, you may also get an "exclusive territory" as part of your franchise fee. The concept of an exlusive territory is an article for another day, but basically that just means that you "own" an area and no other franchisees around you can take customers who live in the territory that belongs to you.
So how much is the franchise fee?
This is going to vary widly depending on the industry, competition, territory size, and other factors. For the pet franchise industry though, a typical franchise fee will be in the range of about $6,000 to $35,000.
For the Dogs Love Running! franchise, our franchise fee is $12,000. And you do get an exclusive territory of 250,000 people (that's really big!).
When looking at a franchise, especially a pet-related one, check out what you're getting first. Ask the franchisor what it is that they'll be doing for you. Once you know that, the value of what you're paying as a franchise fee will become much clearer.