The Cookie Industry is Crumbling

Hey there,

Welcome back to the Franzy Five. Big week in the industry and a bigger one inside our four walls.

This week: hot franchise categories cool off fast, our next free webinar is on the calendar, HydroDog gets the spotlight, restaurant menu prices outrun groceries, a franchisee tells the story of selling and regretting it, and our Winner of the Week goes from first call to closed in five weeks.

Hot categories cool fast: Chip City closes up, Crumbl shuts 57+ stores

Our next free webinar: What Franchise Brands Really Look For

We run a free webinar series because education should come before any decision. Buying a franchise is a big move, and the people who do it well show up informed.

Next up is Tuesday, October 27 at 1:00 PM ET: What Franchise Brands Really Look For, with Bobby Brennan of Front Street Partners and Taylor Blom of Waterloo Turf Franchising. They will cover how to research brands, how to prepare for discovery meetings, what red flags to watch for, and how brands pick the right owner. Live Q&A at the end.

Register for free here. Can't make it live? Past sessions are free on demand at go.franzy.com/franchise-webinar-series, and our funding webinar with a CPA is coming November 18.

HydroDog

Mobile dog grooming from a branded van, with a protected territory.

HydroDog brings the grooming salon to the customer's driveway. Franchisees groom pets at the customer's home out of a fully outfitted, branded van, working from a home base inside a protected territory. The concept started in Clearwater, FL in 2014, and the current franchisor has been selling franchises since January 2023.

Read the numbers closely. The investment range runs from a Hometown franchise with a leased van at the low end to a Standard franchise with a purchased van at the high end (Item 7). In Item 19, 17 franchisee-owned units reported 2025 gross sales ranging from $6,248 to $459,198, with a median of $94,320. The $132,741 average is calculated from the Item 19 table, and 7 of 17 units topped $100K. Tips are reported separately.

It is a young system at 24 US units (22 franchised) at the end of 2025, so ask plenty of franchisee validation questions. The spread between top and bottom units is the story to dig into.

Per September CPI data reported by 1851 Franchise, restaurant menu prices are up 3.5% year over year, nearly double grocery inflation and ahead of 3% wage growth. Quick-service traffic fell 2.6% in Q3. If you are looking at a restaurant concept, ask how the franchisor expects you to protect margins without raising prices again, and how a rate move would hit a variable-rate SBA loan.

He sold his painting franchise in 3 years. Then he regretted it.

This week on The Exit Plan, I sat down with Zac Smith, founder of Elevate Painting. He bought a painting franchise with personally guaranteed SBA debt, grew the commercial side, and sold it after three years for just under $1.5 million.

Then came the part nobody plans for. Once the business was gone, so was his sense of purpose. His big lesson: have the next step lined up before you sell. Worth an hour if you are thinking about the whole arc of ownership, not just the start.

He almost didn't take the call

A recent win at Franzy. We're keeping the new owner's name private.

The start.A few weeks ago, a sales leader reached out after watching one of our interviews. He had written franchising off years ago. Two decades of leading sales teams, a family at home, and a pile of reasons it wasn't for him. He just wanted to hear how it worked.

The work. What I love is how he went about it. He is a dad, a husband, and a spreadsheet person, and he treated this like the biggest decision of his year, because it was. His spouse was in the conversations from the start. He ranked what he cared about, cut a long list down to five brands, and used AI to sharpen his questions, never to make the call for him.

Why it worked. The part that stuck with our team: he was nervous, and he said so. Then he picked up the phone and talked to current owners, sat down with the brand's leadership, and made sure his territory was locked before he committed. The nerves never went away. He just answered them with facts.

The takeaway. About five weeks after that first call, he became the newest owner of Monty's Handyman Services. Most people take three to four months to go from signing up on Franzy to owning a franchise. He did it in five weeks because he made the search his main priority and never let it sit, without cutting a single corner. I'm proud of him, and proud of our team for walking alongside him. If you're on the fence, you don't need to be fearless. You need a short list, real conversations with owners, and people in your corner. Congrats to our newest owner.

Three other stories worth your time this week.

Reply if any of these caught your eye. We read everything.

- Alex

Franzy is the modern way to find and own a franchise.
Charlotte, NC