Concept
The franchise prototype
The franchise prototype is Gerber's thought experiment: design your business as if it were the first of five thousand identical ones, to be run by people with less skill than you. Whether or not you ever franchise, a business designed to be copied is a business that runs on systems rather than on its founder.
Gerber draws the idea from franchising, McDonald's above all, whose customers do not want the best possible experience but the same experience every time, and whose operators are ordinary people following written systems. Asking the franchise question of a one-person bakery or clinic forces the answers that free the owner: what would have to be written down, what would the customer experience have to be every time, what decisions could be made once and then followed. The exercise is not about growth. It serves a business that means to stay small just as well: a business that could be copied can also be handed to someone else for a week or, one day, sold.
A real-life example
A dry cleaner in Mersin imagines five branches run by people who have never pressed a suit. What would each need? He writes a stain chart, a short counter script for taking an order, and a rule for when to call the customer before cleaning. When his nephew covers the shop for a fortnight, the regulars notice only that the counter is faster.
How to use it
- 1Ask: if there were five of these, what would have to be written down?
- 2Write those things one page at a time, in the order they happen.
- 3Test each by having someone else follow it once.