Franchisor Readiness in Lebanon: Can Your Team Operate Without the Founder?

Your business in Lebanon may thrive because you are involved in every decision, but that success does not necessarily mean you are ready to franchise. A franchisee needs an organised business that can make decisions and meet its commitments, not just the founder’s phone number. Before bringing partners into your franchise network, test your own team’s readiness: can it support a new franchise relationship without weakening the original business or constantly waiting for you to step in?

1. Separate Business Management from Franchise Relationship Management

A successful branch manager is not automatically the right person to manage franchise relationships. The former oversees day-to-day operations within your business; the latter works with an independent operator bound to you by contractual obligations. Confusing the two roles can pull your best employees away from their existing work and leave the franchisee receiving conflicting instructions from several people.

Start by listing the new tasks that franchising will create, rather than allocating them verbally among your existing team. These include handling franchisee requests, coordinating internal approvals, documenting decisions, tracking deadlines and referring legal and accounting matters to specialists. The aim is not to rewrite your list of support services, but to establish who within your organisation can actually deliver them.

For each task, record four things:

• Lead person: Who will follow the request through to completion.
• Deputy: Who will take over when that person is absent or busy.
• Decision-maker: Who has authority to approve or refuse requests within clearly defined limits.
• Available time: The realistic share of the employee’s schedule available after existing commitments.

You do not need to hire a large team at the outset. One person can take on several roles, provided every additional task does not become unaccounted-for work squeezed in after their working day.

2. Turn the Founder’s Authority into a Clear Decision-Making Process

Review the decisions you have personally made over a recent period of operation. Divide them into routine decisions that can be delegated, decisions requiring specialist advice and strategic decisions that remain with you. If you retain every approval in the name of protecting the brand, the pace of expansion will depend entirely on your availability.

Create an internal authority matrix setting out the type of decision, the information required, the limits of delegated authority and the circumstances requiring escalation. For example, a relationship coordinator may explain an approved procedure to a franchisee, but cannot promise a fee reduction or a change to a contractual right without authorised approval. A technical lead may assess a request, while any approval that creates a financial commitment remains with the authorised decision-maker.

Lebanon has no comprehensive franchise-specific law, nor a dedicated mandatory franchise disclosure regime comparable to those in some other countries. The relationship is governed principally by the Code of Obligations and Contracts, alongside commercial rules and laws on employment, taxation, consumer protection and intellectual property, depending on the matter concerned. Article 166 enshrines freedom of contract within the limits of public policy, public morals and mandatory legal provisions.

You should therefore ask a Lebanese lawyer to review who is authorised to sign and communicate on behalf of the franchisor entity. Internal administrative delegation does not necessarily confer authority to amend a contract or bind the company in dealings with third parties. The potential application of Legislative Decree No. 34 of 1967 on commercial representation also warrants examination based on the substance of the relationship, not merely its label.

3. Test the Team by Simulating the Founder’s Absence

Before offering franchises, run an internal exercise in which you step out of routine decision-making. This is not another test of the pilot outlet’s profitability; it tests the franchisor’s ability to coordinate, make decisions and keep records. Choose a duration suited to your operating cycle, and define in advance any sensitive situations that must not be left without intervention.

Give the team realistic hypothetical requests: a candidate asking for an exception to the franchise award criteria; a franchisee seeking approval that requires input from several managers; a message containing an unauthorised commercial promise; and the sudden absence of the employee managing the relationship. Test not only whether the team knows the answer, but how it reaches it.

Watch for the following:

• Did the request reach the right person first time?
• Did the team know what it could decide and what needed to be escalated?
• Were the response and its reasoning documented so that a deputy could take over the case?
• Was work in the original business disrupted by handling the request?

After the exercise, analyse what caused any difficulties. The problem may be missing information, conflicting authority or an excessive workload. Address the cause, then repeat the test; hiring another employee will not, on its own, fix an unclear decision-making process.

4. Match the Pace of Franchise Awards to Available Capacity

Do not let the number of interested candidates dictate the pace of expansion. Calculate the time your team will need to establish and manage a new franchise relationship, distinguishing the pressure of the pre-opening phase from subsequent recurring work. Base this on the time recorded during the exercise, not optimistic assumptions that the team will ‘manage somehow’.

Set an internal approval checkpoint before accepting each new franchise: a named lead, a prepared deputy, allocated time and an approved budget for tasks requiring external specialists. If any of these elements is missing, delay the commitment rather than selling the franchise and trying to build the capacity to deliver afterwards.

Also keep a brief record of recurring decisions and approved exceptions. This helps new employees, reduces reliance on the founder’s memory and prevents franchisees from being treated differently without a clear reason.

The practical takeaway: Before awarding a franchise, test the organisation that will grant it. Delegate decisions, appoint deputies and measure the workload; then expand at a pace your team can genuinely sustain.