Technology and Franchises

Ray Kroc could probably be called one of the smartest men in history. Creating the idea of franchise restaurants has made the food industry grow incredibly fast, and will continue to do so for many years to come. In our society today, it has become easier and easier for companies to expand their stores and increase their profit. I am going to talk about the major reasons why franchise restaurants will continue to flourish in the future.
First off, technological advances in the past twenty years along with future inventions are making fast-food restaurants profit in so many ways. When the internet was first invented, all types of companies began creating websites for the general public to go to and see their products, specials, locations, and other general information about the business. Some companies have even created the option to place an order online so the customer doesn’t even have to call into the store. One specific example of this website phenomenon is nutritional information. In the past few years, the trend of eating healthy has become very popular. Franchise companies whose main types of food are deep-fried, full of butter, or just plain unhealthy find it a little discouraging to display the nutritional information right on the menu. To fix this problem, they chose to provide the information on their website, hoping that the general public will forget to look and see the calorie content by the time they get back home.
These companies pride themselves in the amount of locations they have over the world, and love to display it on their home page. If you go to www.subway.com, they even have a counter that tells the number of restaurants they have (32,721 in 91 countries). Another benefit to the internet is the ease of communication. I believe that the idea of franchising came when it did because the ability to transport products, correspond with restaurants across the world, and reach out to the public was becoming easier during the mid 1900’s. Furthermore, when the internet was invented (especially email), this became even easier for the corporations. Companies have even branched out their advertisements to other websites such as Facebook and Television Networks.
Technology can even be looked at in a nutritional aspect. As scientists and nutritionists find new ways to develop healthy alternatives to fats and sugar, the general public will be more inclined to buy their food. In turn, this would increase profit and the ability to expand even more around the world.
I think that no one can really know for sure how fast the franchise industry will develop in the near and far future. There will definitely be growth and more globalization, despite the difficulties the industries come across with the media and competition. It is going to be very interesting to watch these new ways of reaching out to the consumers break through.

Sources:

The future of franchising

The McModel

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