Key Franchising Insights: Your Monthly Round-up March 2026

Following the Olympia franchise expo in January, and with The International Franchise Show coming up at Excel in April, we’ve been having a lot of conversations about how relevant these shows are in the modern franchising landscape, and how they can be used to help boost recruitment. 

Still widely considered the most important dates in the franchising calendar, franchise expos still attract 10s of 1000s of potential franchisees, helping brands not only add new leads to their pipelines but also offering them a chance to engage face-to-face with their audience.

However, exhibiting at one involves considerable investment in terms of time and resources, especially compared to digital-only strategies, and many franchisors are questioning the costs and benefits.

Talking of franchising events, here’s one of an entirely different calibre. Franchise Pool International’s 14th Global Franchise Forum is returning to Lisbon this May, and it is one of those rare occasions where the right connections, the right knowledge, and the right opportunities all converge in the same room over three focused days. Our Head of International Franchising, Farrah Rose, explains exactly what makes it different from the usual franchise expo circuit, not least the fact that it is invitation-only, and specifically designed to put growth-ready brands in front of hand-selected franchise development experts, master franchisees, legal specialists, and brokers from more than 20 European markets.

There is a question which comes up time and again with business owners who are seriously considering franchising, and it is one of the most important they will ever ask: are my foundations actually strong enough to build on? Getting the commercial and legal structure right from the very beginning is not just a box-ticking exercise, it is the difference between a franchise system that scales confidently and one that starts showing cracks at precisely the moment you need it to hold firm.

Which is why we are delighted to be running the first of our free Franchisor Forums on Tuesday 21st April at 11am, and this one is focused squarely on that critical early groundwork. Unlike a traditional webinar, the forum is deliberately kept to a small group, shaped by the questions and challenges of the people in the room, and guided by franchising specialists who have helped dozens of businesses navigate this exact journey. The session will cover financial robustness and franchisability assessment, operations manual development, IP protection and corporate structure, and making sure your franchise agreement and operations manual are genuinely working together rather than pulling in opposite directions.

One of the things we hear most consistently from the franchisors we work with is that the challenges they face don’t stay the same – they evolve as the business evolves, and what you need at the point of launching your franchise is very different from what you need when you’re managing a growing network, troubleshooting franchisee relationships, or planning your next phase of expansion. 

TFC Mentor is a brand new service we are launching which is our response to that need. It’s a dedicated advisory service which pairs founders, franchisors, and senior leaders with an experienced mentor drawn from our 25 years in the franchise industry – someone who functions as a non-executive partner, providing strategic guidance, honest accountability, and hands-on troubleshooting support at whatever stage of the journey you happen to be at. The programme is fully tailored to your specific situation, whether that means preparing your core business for franchising, navigating the transition into becoming a franchisor, or working through the very particular challenges that come with scaling and managing an established network.

It’s a situation most franchisors will recognise: a lead comes in, the initial conversation goes well, the prospectus goes out, a follow-up email or two gets sent, and then silence. Not a rejection, not a “no thanks,” just nothing. 

It’s something we’ve all experienced, and so we’ve asked recruitment systems expert, Andrew Croney, to take a look. In his opinion, it may have less to do with the quality of the leads and more to do with whether the right systems are in place to follow them up intelligently, consistently, and at the right moments. Every promising conversation that fades away represents not just a missed conversion, but the full cost of all the time and marketing spend that generated that enquiry in the first place – and that is a cost which adds up quickly.