How to organise franchisee support in Spain

A profitable business does not become a sustainable franchise network simply by sharing its brand and ways of working. It also needs the capacity to help independent business owners when questions, problems or changes arise. Before bringing your first franchisee on board, set up a central support function that can deliver what you promise without constantly relying on the founder.

1. Define the support you will provide

The starting point is not to hire a large team, but to establish exactly what help each outlet will need. Separate support for new openings from ongoing operational support: they require different levels of commitment and should not compete for the same resources without proper planning.

Prepare a simple service catalogue with three sections:

• Before opening: coordinating the schedule, providing initial training, setting up tools and checking preparations.
• During opening: providing operational guidance, answering urgent questions and following up on early issues.
• During ongoing operations: handling enquiries, providing refresher training, conducting follow-up visits and coordinating improvements.

For each service, identify who it is for, the communication channel, the person responsible, availability and the expected outcome. ‘Commercial support’ is ambiguous; ‘reviewing local marketing activities and providing written recommendations’ makes the deliverable clear.

Clarify the limits too. Coordinating a supplier does not mean guaranteeing its delivery times, and advising on how to organise an outlet does not make the franchisor the employer of its staff. Support must respect the franchisee’s independence as a business owner.

2. Calculate capacity before committing to openings

The first capacity test is to allocate realistic amounts of time to the services in your catalogue. Use records from your existing business: how long a training session takes, how much time a purchasing enquiry requires, or how long a visit takes once travel and reporting are included. If you do not yet have experience supporting franchisees, treat these estimates as assumptions and revise them after the first franchisees join.

Distinguish between three types of workload:

• Fixed: maintaining tools, preparing updates and coordinating suppliers.
• Per outlet: answering enquiries, analysing issues and carrying out follow-ups.
• Per opening: training, preparing and supporting a new outlet.

The total must fit within the team’s available hours, with room for unexpected demands. Do not count the entire working day as time available for support: meetings, holidays and administrative tasks also need to be covered.

Include salaries, travel, tools and external specialists in the budget. Then establish an internal rule: do not confirm an opening unless someone has been assigned responsibility and sufficient capacity is available. This prevents expansion from undermining the service provided to existing franchisees.

3. Assign responsibilities and organise issue handling

Every service needs a named person responsible for it, even if several people help deliver it. In a small head office, one person may fulfil several roles, but cover must be arranged. If every answer depends on the founder, there is still a bottleneck to resolve.

Introduce a shared channel for logging requests. A simple tool is sufficient, provided it records the date, outlet, subject, priority, person responsible and status. Scattered private messages make it difficult to see what is still outstanding.

Set priorities according to impact. A disruption that prevents an outlet from operating needs different treatment from a suggestion for a future campaign. Avoid promising round-the-clock support unless you have the staffing to provide it.

Distinguish between the time to first response and the time to resolution. Acknowledging receipt and explaining the next step does not mean the problem has been solved. Where a third party is involved, explain that dependency and specify when you will provide an update.

When closing an issue, record the solution and consider whether it could prevent similar problems at other outlets, without sharing unnecessary personal data.

4. Align support with Spain’s legal framework

Support is not merely a selling point. Spain’s Royal Decree 201/2010 identifies ongoing commercial or technical assistance throughout the term of the agreement, on the agreed terms, as one of the elements of franchising.

Article 62 of Law 7/1996 on the Regulation of Retail Trade, together with the royal decree itself, also governs pre-contractual disclosure. This information must be provided in writing at least twenty working days before the contract or preliminary agreement is signed, or before the prospective franchisee makes any payment to the franchisor.

The description of support in your sales presentation, pre-contractual documentation and contract must therefore be consistent. With legal advice, specify the services, limits, obligations to cooperate and arrangements for dealing with breaches. Avoid reserving an unlimited right to reduce support unilaterally.

Do not confuse these obligations with compulsory registration of contracts: there is no such general requirement. Royal Decree-Law 20/2018 abolished the national obligation to notify the Register of Franchisors and repealed the regulations governing that register.

5. Review the quality of ongoing support

Measure outstanding requests, response times, recurring issues and whether promised visits or training sessions have taken place. Combine these records with regular conversations: closing requests quickly does not, on its own, show that the support is useful.

If a difficulty keeps recurring, investigate its cause before attributing it to the outlet. Training may be missing, a tool may not be working properly, or an instruction may be unclear.

Practical conclusion: before franchising, prepare a support catalogue, a budget for the capacity required and a tracking system. Promise only the support you can deliver, and set out in writing who provides it, how to request it and what its limits are.