Starting a franchise in Belgium: organise ongoing support

Running a successful business does not automatically mean you have the capacity to support franchisees. Once independent business owners start using your franchise concept, they will expect help when day-to-day challenges arise. In a healthy franchise network, support extends well beyond opening week. Before expanding your existing business through franchising, you need to be clear about what assistance you offer, who will provide it and how many outlets you can realistically support.

1. Turn ‘support’ into a clearly defined service package

‘You will receive ongoing guidance’ sounds reassuring, but tells a franchisee little about what to expect. Start by listing the recurring requests for help within your own business. These might include an ordering system fault, uncertainty about following a recipe, a difficult customer complaint or questions about a local sales promotion.

Then group these requests by the type of assistance needed:

• Operational support: explaining how to apply the franchise concept in day-to-day operations.
• Commercial guidance: reviewing sales performance together and discussing improvements.
• Technical support: investigating problems with required systems or referring them to a supplier.
• Regular meetings: making time for questions that are not urgent but still deserve attention.

Describe what you actually do in each area. A monthly review of sales figures is more specific than ‘ongoing profitability support’. Discussing potential improvements is also different from guaranteeing turnover or profit.

Define what falls outside your services, too. For example, you can provide information on staff scheduling without becoming the employer of the franchisee’s staff. Individual tax or legal advice should still come from a specialist. Clear boundaries protect both parties against misplaced expectations.

2. Make support accessible without doing everything yourself

In your own business, staff may resolve questions by simply popping into your office. That no longer works when several independently run outlets need support at the same time. Establish a clear process for requesting help rather than directing everyone to your personal phone number.

For each type of enquiry, specify:

• which channel to use;
• what information the franchisee needs to provide;
• who carries out the initial assessment;
• when a specialist is brought in;
• who takes over if the person responsible is absent.

Distinguish between acknowledging a request, providing an initial substantive response and resolving the issue. You can generally make a more reliable commitment about when you will assess a fault than when an external supplier will fix it for good.

Decide which situations count as urgent. A system outage that prevents sales needs a different response from a request for new promotional materials. Align support availability with your network’s actual opening hours. Do not promise evening support if no one is scheduled to provide it.

A shared enquiry log helps you keep track of commitments. Record the problem, the person responsible, the next step and how the issue was closed. Where useful, share solutions to recurring problems across the franchise network, without disclosing individual operators’ confidential business information.

3. Test how much support your organisation can handle

Support involves more than time spent on the phone. Preparation, research, internal discussions, travel and follow-up all count too. Measure the full workload before promising new outlets that they can rely on your team.

Use your existing outlet as a testing ground. Over a representative period, ask staff to submit requests through your planned support process. Record how often questions arise, how much time they take and which answers still exist only in the founder’s head.

This exercise will not provide a perfect forecast: an independent franchisee may have different needs from an experienced employee. Supplement the test with scenarios. What happens if two outlets report a technical problem at the same time? Who handles routine enquiries while the franchise support manager spends a full day on site?

Then draw up a capacity plan with separate allowances for:

• scheduled support for existing outlets;
• unexpected enquiries and incidents;
• additional support for new franchisees;
• improvements to the support service itself.

Decide in advance when you will need extra resources. Regularly postponed meetings, unanswered questions and constant intervention by the founder are signs that you need to increase support capacity or slow the pace of expansion.

4. Align your commitments with Belgian law

Belgium has specific rules on pre-contractual information for commercial cooperation agreements. For franchising, Title 2 of Book X of the Belgian Code of Economic Law, Articles X.26 to X.33, is particularly relevant, alongside the statutory definition in Article I.11, 2°. General contract law also applies.

As a rule, the prospective franchisee must receive the draft agreement and the pre-contractual information document, known as the PID, at least one month before entering into the agreement. Your support offering therefore needs to be sufficiently developed before that stage. Ask a specialist lawyer to assess how the obligations should be set out in the agreement and, where required, in the PID.

Keep your commitments consistent across the board. Do not promise unlimited guidance in discussions if the agreement provides only limited assistance. Clearly state which support is included, which services carry a separate charge and what cooperation you expect from the franchisee.

Practical conclusion: only start expanding once every promised support service has a designated person responsible, a workable request process and demonstrably available capacity.