Franchising Starbucks

A franchise is a legal agreement between franchisers and franchisees that consents use of the franchise’s trademark and trade name or marketing plan

As the world’s number one specialty coffee retailer, Starbucks sells coffee drinks, food items, coffee beans, and coffee-related accessories and equipment. In addition, Starbucks sells whole-bean coffees through a specialty sales group and grocery stores. Starbucks has grown beyond coffee into related businesses such as coffee-flavoured ice cream and ready-to-drink coffee beverages. The purpose of this paper is to analyze Starbucks business strategy, customer value proposition, company’s operations and the risks to financial results and reporting in the short term.

1. Franchisees gain numerous advantage when they purchase a franchise. First, while a franchisee may be opening a new store, it is part of an already established business and system. This means a franchisee has access to turnkey operations, allowing an increased speed to establishing and growing the business. Franchisees also get support for management and training activities, as well as financial assistance. Going hand in hand with this, a franchise already has an established brand name, quality of goods and service which have been standardized across the franchisor’s larger company, and national advertising programs from franchisors. Franchises also have large-volume, centralized buying power. A franchise has proven products, and

While doing some research I found that a franchise agreement is a binding legal contract that is signed between a franchisor and franchisee. A franchisor is the company owning the rights to grant franchises to franchisees, while a franchisee is a person or entity who is given the right to conduct business by a franchisor or licensor. The most important definition however is that of a franchise which is an authorization granted by the government or company to an individual or group allowing them to carry out certain commercial activities.

Franchising is normally used by companies that are providing services. It’s easier to begin franchising than settings up separate traders/stores, after companies begin to franchise it becomes easier to build a bigger customer base. Although, Franchising does not come at a cheap price, The franchisee has to pay a large amount of initial fees and commissions to the franchise.

The franchiser can attain rapid growth for the chain by sign- ing up many franchisees in many different locations.

The first choice of business is the franchise. In a franchise, legal binding agreement is entered into between two firms, the franchisor (the product or service owner) and the franchisee (the firm to market the product or service in a particular location). The franchisee pays a certain sum of money for the right to market this product” (Rubin, 1978, p.224). The franchising is more prevalent in the restaurant industry (Hoffman & Preble, 2003). The two distinct features of this business type include; first, in order to notable service components should

Franchising is a business model that allows companies to rapidly expand their market share. According to Franchise.com (2015), there are three types of franchises: distributorships, trademark licensing, and business format franchises. When two organizations enter into a distributorship, the originating company provides the rights another company to sell their products. An example of a distributorship is when an auto manufacturing company grants rights to a dealership to sell their vehicles (Franchise.com, 2015). Trademark licensing is when one company allows another company to use their trademark (Franchise.com, 2015). The business format franchise authorizes franchisees to sell the parent company’s products and/or services as well as utilize their business model. This type of franchising is the most common and is the type needed to obtain to open a new Cold Stone Creamery.

Franchise means “privilege” or “freedom” and the word originates from an old French dialect. The history of franchising can be traced back to the Middle Ages (476 A.D. – 1453 A.D.) when kings granted franchises to specific people or groups to perform a certain type of commercial activity or hunt on their land. German breweries in the 1840s also used franchising to distribute their beer to different geographic areas. The breweries granted the franchises to certain taverns to be the sole distributor of their beer in a specific area. Isaac Singer was known to pioneer the use of written franchise agreements. In the 1850’s, Isaac Singer started granting franchises for its sewing machines because he wanted to distribute his sewing machines to customers

* Franchise: In a franchise operation, the Franchiser licenses the rights to its name, operating procedure, etc. to another business, the franchisee. A franchisee basically buys a licence to operate a ready-made business. Some advantages are bargaining power with suppliers and a high success rate. Some disadvantages are big businesses don’t always make a profit, owning a franchise makes it difficult to get out of.

Franchising is defined as “a commercial agreement between a party that owns a trade name or trademark (the franchisor) and party that sells or distributes goods or services using that trade name or trademark (the franchisee) (Kubasek et al., 2015, p. 431). There are key advantages for choosing a franchise when starting a new business. First, there is many times instant brand awareness that is identifiable by potential customers, which you as a new owner do not have to concentrate on building. Secondly, on-going marketing of your business is backed by the power of the established brand, and could be as simple as contributing a fee to a advertising fund that is driven by the franchisor. Thirdly, the Return on Investment (ROI) will most likely be faster as the customers are “ready-made” and eager to buy your product or service. Fourthly, the franchise model provides a built-in support model, both from the franchisor and from other franchisees throughout the region and nation. Lastly, the franchise will provide consistent and extensive training in every aspect of the business (Goldberg, 2015).

Starbucks’ lead in the specialty coffee industry exemplifies the result of deftly executing a well-planned business strategy. Moreover, Starbucks is well positioned for what is expected to be a continuing rise in the popularity of specialty coffee products. The question before Starbucks’ leadership, however, is what avenues will lead to Starbucks’ goal of remaining true to its core, the highest quality coffee products while providing a “total coffee experience” for its customers?

In general the coffeehouse industry in the United States was experiencing an increase in coffee consumption per capita due to the “Starbucks effect”. At this time Starbucks was operating approximately 20,000 stores in the United States and was living a fast expansion strategy worldwide.

Franchisors are increasingly having to be more and more selective in the adoption of franchisees with factors such as economic climate and the potential difficulty with growth playing key factors in the decision making process. It is not simply an ability to grow which creates a successful Franchise and nor is it the desire of any franchisor to adopt every potential franchisee. Franchisors are becoming more and more scrutinising as the global economy declines. There is a general understanding within any franchised

‘As a result, expansion can proceed at a much faster pace than would otherwise be possible, enabling the franchisor to achieve increased market share whilst benefiting from economies of scale.’ (http://www.butterfield.co.za) Finally, franchisors can benefit from the cultural knowledge and know-how of local managers. This can be helpful in lowering the risk of business failure in unfamiliar markets, as well as creating a competitive advantage. Franchising offers franchisees the advantage of starting up a new business quickly based on a proven trademark and way of doing business, as opposed to building a new business from scratch. The franchised business is based on a proven idea and has an existing customer base, therefore making it much easier to sell your product than it would if you were to start up your own business.