Starting a Franchise in Belgium: Test Whether Local Customer Loyalty Will Transfer

Your existing business has loyal customers, but that does not prove the same concept will succeed elsewhere. Your personal contacts, a distinctive role in the neighbourhood or a reputation built over many years may account for most of your visitors. If you want to build a franchise network in Belgium, you first need to establish which aspects of customer loyalty can genuinely transfer. This practical assessment will help you make that distinction before recruiting prospective franchisees.

1. Find out why customers really come

Start with your customers’ behaviour, rather than your own description of the concept. Business owners often cite quality and service as the reasons for their success. Customers may have quite different reasons: the business is on their daily route, they know the owner personally, or there are few comparable options nearby.

Combine three sources of information:

• Brief customer conversations: ask why someone chooses your business, which alternatives they considered and what would make them leave.
• Purchase data: look at which products or services generate repeat purchases and which are mainly bought once.
• How new customers find you: record whether they come through personal recommendations, street visibility, online searches or a targeted campaign.

Do not ask only satisfied regulars for their views. Speak to new visitors too and, where possible, people who have stopped buying from you. Otherwise, you are mainly investigating why your current audience is a good fit, rather than why a new audience would choose the same concept.

Where possible, record your findings anonymously. This assessment requires patterns, not a collection of personal customer files.

2. Separate the strength of the concept from local advantages

Next, create an overview with three columns: why customers come, the evidence supporting that reason and whether it can be replicated elsewhere.

A recognisable product range, a clearly defined service and a consistent purchasing process can form part of a transferable business concept. An exceptionally favourable location or a long-standing partnership with a single local association does not automatically fall into that category.

For example, use the following categories:

• Transferable: the same way of working can deliver the same value to customers in another location.
• Transferable under certain conditions: the value to customers depends on particular local circumstances.
• Specific to the existing business: the value to customers depends mainly on your current premises, history or personal relationships.

A lunch concept, for example, may appeal because of its fast service. But if demand comes almost entirely from one large employer on the same street, speed is not the only condition for success. Your concept must then specify the customer demand patterns needed to keep the offer relevant.

The aim is not to eliminate every local advantage. It is to understand which advantages a future franchisee will need to build themselves and which your concept actually provides.

3. Test your customer promise with a new audience

Next, investigate whether people with no existing connection to your business recognise the same value. This is a test of whether the concept can transfer commercially, not a full assessment of a future location.

Choose a small-scale experiment suited to your business: a temporary sales initiative outside your usual area, a demonstration day or a limited offer to a new customer group. Check in advance which permissions and practical requirements apply.

Keep the core concept recognisable. If you offer exceptional discounts or a completely different product range during the test, you will mainly be measuring the appeal of that departure from your usual offer.

Set out in advance what you want to learn:

• Do people understand what you offer without an explanation?
• Do they choose your offer because of the intended customer promise?
• Do they accept your usual prices?
• Does the test generate repeat purchases or specific follow-up enquiries?
• Which objections arise repeatedly?

Also decide in advance when you will proceed, make adjustments or test again. There is no universal pass mark. A service with a long purchasing cycle requires different observations from an everyday consumer purchase. Always record the circumstances and limitations of the experiment.

4. Use the findings to prepare for your franchise launch

Summarise the results in an internal decision document. Describe the transferable customer promise, essential local conditions, remaining uncertainties and adjustments you still need to test. An inconclusive result is a reason for further research, not for making stronger sales promises to prospective franchisees.

That distinction also matters legally. In Belgium, Book X, Title 2 of the Code of Economic Law governs pre-contractual information for commercial cooperation agreements. In franchising, prospective franchisees must, in principle, receive the draft agreement and the pre-contractual information document at least one month before entering into the agreement. This document, known locally as the PID, includes socio-economic data, among other information.

Make sure relevant market findings are carefully reflected in that information. Do not present a small-scale test as proof of general market demand, and distinguish clearly between what you have measured and what remains an assumption. Have a Belgian franchise lawyer review how the findings are incorporated into the legal documentation.

Practical takeaway: only recruit on the strength of a transferable customer promise once you can explain why new customers choose it, which local conditions are required and what evidence supports your conclusion.