franchisee Archives

Jun 7, 2017

6 Must-Ask Questions Before Completing Merger & Acquisition

Franchise mergers and acquisitions are not slowing down, and the deals range from small, like the recent acquisition of Green Home Solutions by Mosquito Shield, to the $1.3 billion tender offer purchase of Popeye’s by Restaurant Brands International, the owner of Burger King and Tim Hortons. The mergers and acquisitions of franchise companies and systems involve many special considerations that set them apart from the acquisitions of other businesses. Such businesses are more than the “sum of their parts” as franchise companies subsist on a foundation built from distinctive business attributes. These include a franchised company’s intangible assets and their… Read more

Mar 27, 2017

5 Ways to Address the Legal Risks of Joint Employment

Franchisors must exercise caution in how they support franchisees on the labor front. In recent years, the franchise world has been upended by an aggressive, anti-franchise, NLRB. 2014 saw the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issue a series of rulings that held that franchisors might be the joint employers of their franchisees’ employees. A franchise is a trademark license that extends use of a brand while shifting costs of overhead such as labor to an independent contractor. The idea that the employees of a franchise may also be the employees of the franchisor defeats the purpose and value of the… Read more

Feb 7, 2017

What A Trump Administration Will Mean For Franchising

as published in QSR Magazine The election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States certainly promises significant changes for the nation’s businesses. Despite the fact that many of Trump’s policies on labor and employment are still unclear, many laws and regulations promulgated during the Obama administration, including many rulings by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), may be challenged by the new Republican administration going forward in 2017 and beyond. Some of the more controversial rulings by the NLRB in Obama’s last administration have involved issues related to joint employers. In August 2015, The NLRB ruled… Read more