The entrepreneurial spirit is often inspired to create big ideas and ambitious plans. The best of them could be the next big quick-serve restaurant franchise (often called QSRs in the franchising industry, but most people know them as fast-food restaurants). If this is familiar, this article will tell you what you need to know for how to start a quick-serve franchise, and maybe give you something to think about.
Table of Contents
How to Start a Quick Serve Franchise
Create Your Quick Serve Restaurant Concept and Business Plan
We begin the how-to guide to starting a QSR with developing your restaurant concept and business plan. Perhaps this is where your inspiration struck, so you may have already done this. If you haven’t, that’s ok.
Start thinking about what kind of restaurant concept would stand out in the franchising industry from other QSRs, and how you could bring that idea to the market. Fast-casual restaurants—sub sandwich shops, Italian or Mexican concepts, or even places that specialize in noodle dishes—are also a part of this segment of franchising.
Determining your target market can help. What’s your ideal customer, and what type of food do they seek out? That will inform your QSR concept, which goes a long way toward mapping out how to start a quick serve franchise.
Once your concept is in place, building a business plan is the natural next step for fleshing out your quick serve franchise vision.
Develop Your QSR’s Stand-Out Menu
The menu is the next step in how to start a quick serve franchise. Once you develop your signature flavors and menu items, you’ll know what kitchen equipment to procure to create the cuisine your QSR franchise will serve. With kitchen equipment planned, you’ll be able to map out your kitchen’s square footage requirement. Once that’s known, you’ll have a good idea of how big a building your QSR will require, and you can go from there.
Build Funding for Your QSR Franchise
Based on your new restaurant’s menu, you’ve got a pretty good idea now of what type of build-out you’re facing. You’re well on your way for how to start a quick serve franchise. But another common question restaurateurs ask is how much does it cost?
How Much Does it Cost to Start a Quick Serve Franchise?
Unfortunately, there’s no universal answer to this question. There are many different aspects that go into knowing how much it will cost to start a quick service franchise, including but not limited to the variability in restaurant types, building requirements and uniqueness of concepts.
The real question is how can you build funding to start your QSR franchise? There are many options here, and they can be flexible for your situation to suit your individual needs.
First, you can consider a Small Business Administration loan or a private bank loan. This is one of the main reasons you’ve created your savvy new business plan. It’ll help show others exactly what your vision for your QSR franchise will look like, who your customers will be, the market for a restaurant like yours, and the projections for revenue and potential growth, and more. When financial professionals see your QSR vision, they’ll be able to determine if your idea is one that merits the risk of lending you the money for your business.
If procuring debt is not part of your hopes for how to start a quick serve franchise, there are other options. You could consider other sources of investment capital, such as your 401(k) or other investment vehicle you may have at your disposal.
You may also be amenable to finding a partner or interested investors who would be open to putting up the initial capital in exchange for a percentage of the profits.
Secure a Location and Permits for Your Flagship Restaurant
With financing in place, you’re ready to begin the next phase: secure a location and permits. This can be a painstaking process, so don’t be surprised if this takes some time.
But once you have your location and permits in place, you can begin outfitting it with your equipment, decor, and furniture. This is when your vision for your QSR franchise begins coming into reality. It’s an exciting time in any entrepreneur’s journey.
This is also when you can begin hiring and training your opening staff.
Source Food Suppliers
Building relationships with quality suppliers is a key component in starting a quick serve franchise. Reliable sourcing ensures your menu items are consistently available, and customers who come in can develop favorites. From there, they become regulars, and word-of-mouth will grow. The better this relationship, the better pricing negotiations can go when you’re ready for opening future locations.
Market your New Quick Serve Franchise
You’ll need to get the word about your QSR franchise out there so people will know to come try your food. Effective marketing strategies aren’t just important at the local level; they’ll serve your QSR franchise well when you open more locations regionally and nationally as well. Be thorough in your research on what marketing will work for you.
Hold a Grand Opening for Your Quick Serve Franchise
This is the culmination of the work you’ve done to this point, and it’s one of the biggest steps in how to start a quick serve franchise. The opening of your flagship restaurant is the beginning of building your relationship with your customers. A successful grand opening can give you an infusion of energy to keep going, and it can energize your customers to help you spread the word on your QSR.
Build Brand Awareness to Grow Your Quick Serve Franchise and Find Future Franchisees
Growing your brand is crucial to enticing new qualified franchise leads who will be interested in opening new locations of your QSR in their communities. Building your brand awareness will give your franchise the legitimacy necessary for future investors to sign franchising agreements with your restaurant franchise. Having a solid reputation in the QSR franchise market is one of the final steps in how to start a quick serve franchise.
An Easier Solution for How to Start a Quick Serve Franchise: Become a Multi-Unit Franchisee for Yampa Sandwich Co.
If this seems like a daunting process, perhaps a different investment opportunity will be just as rewarding. Yampa Sandwich Co. has developed a franchise model for a quick serve restaurant that’s already done most of this work for you.
We’ve built a menu full of crave-worthy foods that are harm-free and chock full of ingredients our customers crave.
We’ve developed a franchise model that’s tried and tested since we opened our first quick serve restaurant in Steamboat Springs, Colorado more than 20 years ago.
Our menu is unique and filled with whole ingredients that stand above a competitive field of burger and pizza and taco franchises, so we catch our customers’ attention.
Our community minded focus means our franchisees become an important part of their local economy and have a spirit of giving back that builds a sense of belonging and neighborhood in their locations.
With the Yampa Sandwich Co. philosophy to fuel the mind, body, and soul for the adventures of life, whether that’s tackling a mountain or a boardroom, we embrace the entrepreneurial spirit. As such, we offer our franchise owners as much support as we can to help them realize their franchising goals. Because when our franchise owners thrive, everybody prospers.
To us, the question isn’t how to start a quick serve franchise, because we’ve already done that. We’re growing, and building our brand, and sharing our mission with even more customers than ever. The question is, how can we help you see that your next big adventure could be with us as a multi-unit Yampa Sandwich Co. franchise owner?
To find out more, download our free industry outlook, which gives insights into the sub sandwich industry and the Yampa Sandwich Co. history and future. Or contact us directly for answers to any questions you may have, including how to start a quick serve franchise. We’d be happy to show you.
