Buying a franchise: assessing training and support

When buying a franchise in Portugal, access to a brand and an operations manual is not enough. Learning the business model and getting help when difficulties arise can be crucial to running your outlet. Within a franchise network, support should translate into specific tasks, named responsibilities and terms you can verify. This guide helps you assess that support before committing to the investment.

1. Ask for evidence of support, not just a presentation

Phrases such as ‘ongoing support’ or ‘comprehensive training’ mean little without concrete examples. Start by asking for a plan covering three distinct stages: preparing to open, launching the outlet and support during day-to-day operations.

For each stage, establish who provides the service, how to request it and what it actually includes. A head office team may provide effective remote support, but that is not the same as having someone on site during the first few days.

Ideally, ask for:

• An initial training programme setting out the content, duration and intended participants.
• A schedule of planned support activities before and after opening.
• Details of the roles responsible for providing ongoing support.
• Contact channels, availability and procedures for urgent situations.
• An anonymised example of a site visit report or improvement plan.

The know-how may be confidential. The franchisor may ask you to sign a confidentiality agreement before sharing materials. If it will not provide the full manual at this stage, ask for the contents page and a supervised demonstration of relevant procedures. Protecting information should not prevent you from understanding the service you are buying.

2. Check whether the training prepares your team

Useful training should reflect the outlet’s actual tasks: customer service, using systems, purchasing, stock management, organising the team and quality control. It should also make clear which legal requirements relevant to the business it covers, and which require external training or advice.

Ask whether there is a practical element and how learning is assessed. Attending sessions does not, in itself, demonstrate that a prospective franchisee is ready to operate independently.

Check four further points:

• Participants: does training cover only the owner, or also the manager and staff?
• Replacements: how are new staff trained after opening?
• Difficulties: what happens if someone needs to repeat modules?
• Updates: who provides training on new procedures or changes to systems?

Ask for a breakdown of costs. Even where training is included in the initial franchise fee, you may have to pay for travel, accommodation, meals, staff wages and additional sessions. Also check whether expenses for support visits are charged separately.

The preparation stage should end with clear criteria for assessing readiness to open. If the franchisor requires you to pass an assessment, find out in advance what the criteria are, whether retakes are available and what happens if opening is delayed.

3. Check how ongoing support works in practice

Speak to existing franchisees, preferably at different stages of running their businesses, rather than only those presented as success stories. The aim is to understand how consistent the support is, without asking for confidential commercial information.

Replace general questions with questions about specific events:

• Who did they turn to when they last faced an operational difficulty?
• How long did it take to receive a useful response?
• What help did they receive during opening?
• Did visits lead to practical recommendations, or were they simply inspections?
• Were there any unexpected charges for services?

Compare the answers with the written proposal. A visit to check compliance with brand standards is not necessarily a support session: both may be important, but they serve different purposes.

Also ask how service is maintained when the usual contact is absent, and how the head office team supports new openings without neglecting existing outlets. There is no universal ratio of support staff to franchisees; what matters is demonstrable capacity to respond.

Record any discrepancies and ask for clarification in writing. A single account is not enough to conclude that support is good or bad, but recurring patterns warrant investigation.

4. Turn promises into contractual obligations

Portugal has no franchise-specific law, nor does it require a pre-contractual disclosure document with legally prescribed content for the franchise sector. This does not mean there is no legal protection.

The Portuguese Civil Code provides for freedom of contract in Article 405, good faith in negotiations in Article 227, and good faith in contractual performance in Article 762. Where standard contract terms are used, Decree-Law No. 446/85 also applies, particularly regarding duties to communicate and explain those terms and restrictions on prohibited clauses.

The European Code of Ethics for Franchising is a self-regulatory benchmark, not Portuguese law that applies universally. Check whether the franchisor is bound by it through association membership or a contractual commitment.

Ask for the contract, or an annex forming part of it, to specify training content, participants, costs, the forms of support available and the complaints procedure. Distinguish between a deadline for responding and a deadline for resolving an issue: resolution may depend on the complexity of the problem.

A lawyer should review any clauses allowing the franchisor to reduce or change support unilaterally, as well as the remedies available for breach of contract. Do not assume that a failure to provide support automatically entitles you to suspend payments.

Practical conclusion: before signing, gather the training plan, cost breakdown and support commitments. Compare them with franchisees’ actual experiences, and obtain written clarification of anything that still rests on a vague promise.