This story appears in the
January 2021
issue of
Nobody expected 2020 to be a year of growth. With a pandemic raging, the future seemed too uncertain. Who could accelerate their business, let alone open a new one? What potential new franchisee would plunk down their up-front costs in this environment — and maybe even open a storefront?
But now 2020 is done and the numbers are in. There are two ways to look at them.
Let’s start with the bad news. The rate of new unit openings shrank, especially internationally. From July 2019 to July 2020 (which is the 12-month span we look at for the Franchise 500), the companies that made our ranking added 6,935 international franchises — a 3.4 percent increase. That number was down significantly from 2018 to 2019, when these companies added 12,064 franchises, a 6.3 percent increase. This marks the first time in several years that international growth dipped below U.S. growth. But there was also a dip in new U.S. franchises: Only 7,141 new units were opened between 2019 and 2020, compared with 9,110 between 2018 and 2019.