An Operations Manual for a Franchise in Belarus

A successful company-owned outlet does not, on its own, prove that an independent partner can replicate it. Quality often depends on the manager’s memory, the founder’s personal contacts and unwritten rules. Before entering the franchise market in Belarus, a business owner should prepare an operations manual: a practical set of instructions that enables another team to serve customers, control costs and resolve routine problems without the owner’s constant involvement.

1. Describe actions, not a vision of the ideal business

Start by observing an existing outlet, rather than formatting a document. Follow the entire operating cycle: preparing to open, taking orders, delivering a service or making a sale, purchasing supplies and closing a shift. Record exceptions separately: a late supplier, a return, an equipment breakdown or an absent employee. These situations often reveal knowledge that still exists only in the founder’s head.

Use the same structure for each process:

• Trigger: when an employee needs to act.
• Responsibility: who carries out the task and who covers for them.
• Sequence: specific steps, with no ambiguous wording.
• Outcome: what should be achieved and how to check it.
• Exceptions: whom to notify about a problem and what to do while waiting for a response.

Instead of saying “maintain a high standard of service”, explain how to confirm an order, check that it is complete, tell a customer about a delay and log a complaint. Include log templates, sample messages and checklists that the team actually uses.

Distinguish mandatory standards from recommendations. Consistent quality requirements should not be mixed up with useful but optional techniques favoured by a particular manager. Also indicate where a partner may choose a local supplier or adjust opening hours. This reduces the need for approvals and makes the limits of their independence clear from the outset.

2. Test the manual with a team working without the founder

The best person to test an instruction is an employee who has never performed the task it describes. Give them the document, provide the planned training and observe their work. If the founder has to keep giving verbal prompts, the process has not yet been successfully handed over: the missing guidance needs to be added to the manual or training programme.

Appoint a manager at the pilot outlet and establish a procedure for requesting help. The founder should not quietly correct mistakes, negotiate with suppliers or cover staff shortages. Record every such intervention: what happened, why the instructions did not help and what resources were needed. Otherwise, the pilot will demonstrate the owner’s capabilities rather than whether the model can be replicated.

Define the assessment criteria in advance. For example, the team should be able to close a shift, process returns, keep stock records and submit complete reports independently. Base quality thresholds and acceptable tolerances on your own experience and the mandatory requirements applicable to the business, not on someone else’s presentation.

Do not test only a normal working day. Run safe training exercises covering a till failure, the absence of a key employee and a customer complaint. Do not put people, products or data at genuine risk for the sake of a test.

Track the cost of meeting the standards separately. If the manual requires an additional administrator, paid software or regular visits by a manager, those costs must be included in the prospective partner’s financial model. Unpaid help from the founder is also a resource that will need replacing as the business expands.

3. Link the manual to the agreement and the protection of know-how

Belarus has no standalone franchising law, but franchise relationships are specifically regulated by its Civil Code. Article 910 provides for a comprehensive business licence agreement — a franchise agreement. This covers the granting, for a fee, of a package of licensed rights that includes the right to use a business name, the intellectual property specified in the agreement and undisclosed information.

Under Article 910-1, the agreement must be in writing and registered with the patent authority, the National Centre of Intellectual Property. Failure to comply with the registration requirement renders the agreement invalid. The manual itself is no substitute for this registration.

Article 910-3 is particularly important when preparing instructions: the rights holder must provide the necessary technical and commercial documentation and instruct the user and their employees. It is therefore not enough for the agreement to state that the partner “has familiarised themselves with the standards”. You need a clear list of the materials to be supplied, arrangements for access and evidence that training has taken place.

Work with a Belarusian lawyer to establish:

• which documents form part of the manual and how their versions are identified;
• which provisions are binding on the partner;
• how the handover of materials and delivery of instruction are recorded;
• which information is confidential and who may access it;
• what happens to access rights and copies when the relationship ends.

Do not assume that the entire document automatically qualifies as a protected trade secret. For valuable, non-public know-how, assess whether the Law of the Republic of Belarus on Trade Secrets applies and put the appropriate protection arrangements in place. Restrict access by role, introduce confidentiality obligations and keep records of the materials supplied. Use anonymised customer and employee data in training examples.

4. Establish a controlled update process

The manual should evolve as practices are tested and proven, rather than becoming a stream of mandatory instructions in a chat group. Assign someone responsibility for the document, maintain a change log and archive previous versions. Each update should have a date, a reason, a person responsible and an implementation deadline.

Distinguish between corrections to typographical errors, changes to working procedures and changes affecting costs or contractual obligations. The latter cannot simply be imposed on a partner by uploading a new file. The approval process must comply with the agreement; if the agreement itself changes, the requirements for registering amendments must also be taken into account.

Test a new procedure at your own outlet before rolling it out. Then explain the changes to partners, provide any necessary training and ask them to confirm implementation. Collect feedback: members of the franchise network can help identify situations the founder has not yet encountered.

Practical takeaway: start with one critical process and check whether another team can carry it out without your prompts. What matters when scaling up is not the volume of documentation, but the partner’s proven ability to work from it.