Starting a franchise network in Belgium: organise your support

Running a successful business does not automatically prepare you to guide other entrepreneurs. If you are building a franchise network in Belgium, you also need to organise training, sales support and technical assistance. This extra responsibility comes on top of your day-to-day operations. A practical support plan helps you establish what you can promise, who will deliver it and where you lack capacity before you take on your first franchisee.

1. Turn good intentions into specific services

‘You will receive comprehensive support’ sounds appealing, but says little about what a franchisee will actually get. Start by listing the support needed to put your business format into practice correctly. Distinguish between pre-opening assistance, support during the launch phase and ongoing support.

For each service, describe its purpose, who will deliver it and the intended outcome. Examples include:

• Initial training: the franchisee learns to handle orders, quality checks and customer service independently.
• Opening support: a member of staff provides on-site help to establish working processes and carry out the first operational checks.
• Sales support: you review sales performance and help prepare local promotions.
• Technical assistance: a designated contact handles problems with the required systems.
• Ongoing training: changes to products or procedures are explained appropriately.

Set boundaries too. Helping with staff scheduling, for example, does not mean that you recruit staff or become their employer. A franchisee remains an independent business owner. Good support strengthens that independence rather than passing every decision back to you.

2. Calculate the capacity needed to deliver your promises

Support takes more than the time set aside for a scheduled meeting. Preparation, travel, follow-up, administration and unexpected problems also demand attention. Map these activities separately so they do not get lost among the tasks involved in running your existing business.

Create a capacity planning sheet covering the following for each service:

• the expected frequency;
• the time needed for preparation and delivery;
• the person responsible and their backup;
• any external costs;
• the circumstances that require extra resources.

Then work through different scenarios: a normal working week, a new opening, and a week when a supplier fails to deliver just as a till system develops problems. Base your estimates on your own experience, not optimistic sales assumptions.

Pay particular attention to tasks that depend entirely on you. If you are the only person who can deliver training and resolve complaints, you create a vulnerable bottleneck. Train someone else or identify a specialist you can call on. You remain responsible for the support you have promised, even if you outsource its delivery.

Plan growth around your available support capacity, not just interest from prospective franchisees. Delaying a new opening may be wiser than leaving existing partners without adequate help.

3. Establish a predictable support routine

A franchise network benefits from both accessibility and clear expectations. Without an agreed process, questions arrive through a mixture of phone calls, messaging apps and personal emails. Urgent problems can then be easily missed, while solutions remain known to just one person.

Choose a central channel for support requests. Agree on the information each request should contain, such as the location concerned, the problem, its impact and what has already been tried. Distinguish between a fault that brings operations to a halt and a routine request for improvement.

Do not promise a resolution time that is outside your control. For an outage affecting third-party software, for example, you can specify when you will respond and how you will provide updates without guaranteeing when service will be restored.

Combine this day-to-day assistance with regular review meetings. Discuss not only turnover, but also recurring errors, customer complaints and training needs. Encourage partners to share experiences without unnecessarily disclosing confidential business information. A good solution developed at one location can then benefit the whole network.

Assess whether your support is useful: are requests addressed promptly, do the same problems recur, and can partners carry on independently after receiving guidance? Use these findings to adapt your services.

4. Align your promises with Belgian rules

What you promise during introductory discussions must match your documents and the services you actually provide. Have your support plan legally reviewed before using it as a selling point.

In Belgium, franchising is subject, among other provisions, to the rules on pre-contractual information for commercial cooperation agreements: Title 2 of Book X of the Belgian Code of Economic Law (WER). Under Article X.27, the prospective franchisee must receive the draft agreement and a separate pre-contractual information document at least one month before the agreement is concluded. Article X.28 specifies what information that document must contain. The period is therefore not twenty days.

Belgium has no separate statutory framework governing the franchise agreement in its entirety. Alongside the specific pre-contractual rules, general contract law and applicable rules on unfair terms between businesses also apply. The European Code of Ethics for Franchising is not Belgian law.

Specify in the agreement which support services are included, what conditions apply and when additional assistance requires a separate agreement. Avoid provisions allowing unilateral, unlimited changes, and have the agreement checked for consistency with the information document.

Practical takeaway: before making your first franchise offer, create a single support plan setting out services, responsibilities, available hours and contact arrangements. Promise only what your organisation can deliver even during a busy week.