There are levels here in terms of franchisee adoption. On one end, you have the power users, the franchise owners who are already trying to make everything as efficient as possible, eliminate touch points, and reduce how many times they need to manually handle certain things. We have owners doing exactly that right now and moving fast to adopt new technologies into their businesses.
But when I think about AI for most franchise owners, the question I am asking is simpler than that. What is something they are spending time on that is more tedious than it needs to be, more of a task they should be handing off so they can spend their energy somewhere else? Things like drafting routine communications, automating email campaigns, or doing research that used to mean an hour of searching online. Creating a presentation that would take half a day. How do you streamline that now?
That is where I see AI making a real difference for franchise owners today. And I see it evolving into every aspect of how we operate. But the goal is not for AI to take over. The goal is for AI to assist you in doing the most important things in the business every single day.
Where franchise owners are getting it wrong
Some franchise owners are looking at AI and thinking: how can this totally run my business so I can go sit on the beach? That is the wrong way to frame it.
AI is not going to take away the relationship-building side of your business. It is not going to manage your staff. It is not going to replace the heart and soul of what makes a location work. What it can do is free you up to do more of the strategic work that really drives the business forward.
For a business like Signarama and many others, you want to be talking with your customers, upselling, finding new business, networking, and managing your team. AI shouldn’t replace any of that. It should be assisting you in getting the tedious stuff out of the way, so you can actually show up for the parts that require you.
The other mistake I see is on the opposite end: staying on the sidelines because it feels overwhelming or because the process is already working and nobody wants to touch it. We have been dealing with that kind of friction for 40 years. When we changed point of sale systems, changed logos, changed taglines, there was always resistance. Change is difficult once you have been doing something for a long time. We have to be sensitive to that. But we also have to pitch the benefits and be clear about why it matters.
“The goal is not for AI to take over. The goal is for AI to assist you in doing the most important things in the business every single day.”
What our job is as the franchisor
It’s our franchise system. That means we have an obligation to lead on any AI initiatives within the brand. The first layer is pointing owners in the right direction and giving them good guidance on where they should be spending their time and attention. The layer underneath that is showing them the process, how the tools integrate together, and giving them a tech stack where everything actually works. The layer after that is how personalized and deep do you want to go.
We may not have all the solutions, and I will be honest about that. But we do have to lead, and we are working on it. The franchisor’s job is to give that guidance: here is how much money you should be thinking about spending on AI, here is how much time, here is what you should actually be doing with it. That direction matters.
The compliance piece is something we still don’t fully have our hands wrapped around, and I think that is true across most franchise systems right now. When owners can generate marketing assets, content, and customer-facing materials that quickly and that easily, getting your hands around what they are producing is a lot harder than it used to be. We can’t be loose with the security of our data. We can’t be loose with internal processes or anything that could be considered a trade secret. Anyone can take something proprietary and put it into an open-source model, and a competitor can potentially access it. That is a real concern for me, and it is something we have to keep focusing on.
AI has to have a return on investment
Just because you can implement AI into something does not mean you should. I think about the tokenization costs that have caught some large companies off guard, spending thousands or millions of dollars and then asking whether they even needed to go down that path. Franchising has always been about delivering consistent experiences at scale, and AI can support that, but it can also become overkill or just not the right fit for a given situation.
The ROI might be time savings. It might be actual dollars saved. It might be an investment where you want to be two years from now. But it has to be something. It cannot just be a fun thing you are playing with. There has to be an actual benefit.
And when you go down a path and realize it was the wrong one, you have to be willing to pull the plug. That is actually the harder move. The harder thing is when you have committed to something, spent money on it, publicly talked about it, and then slowly realize it isn’t working. The ego move is to keep going. The right move is to say this was a mistake and we need to go a different direction. Our franchise owners need to understand that too.
“The harder thing is when you’ve committed to something, spent money on it, publicly talked about it, and then slowly realize it isn’t working. The right move is to say this was a mistake and change direction.”
What I am trying to do with AI at United Franchise Group
I want to be direct about this: the goal for me with AI is not to lay off people. That is not what I’m focused on.
The goal is to level up our game. I think about all the reactive work that takes up time across our support team, our marketing team, our franchise owners. What if AI could handle more of that reactive layer so everyone could spend more time on the proactive things that actually drive growth? That is the shift I care about. Not how many pennies we can pinch or how lean we can run. How much more proactive, forward-thinking, and impactful can our people be right now.
I also want to acknowledge something honestly: I spent a lot of time recently just building projects and experimenting with AI tools, and I love it. But there is also a part of me that thinks about the consequences we haven’t figured out yet. The security questions. The data exposure questions. The things we are still learning as an industry. It is coming, and it is powerful, but we should be going into it with our eyes open.
What separates the franchise businesses that will use this moment well
Franchising has historically been a little slower to adopt new technology. Big systems are hard to turn quickly. There are a lot of opinions when it comes to just about everything. And when a process is working, there is always resistance to changing it.
But the tech stack is now a core part of your franchise system. If you do not have a plan for how AI integrates into what you do, you are going to fall behind. It is not a future consideration anymore. It already is a core part of how forward-thinking franchise organizations operate, and it is only going to be more embedded from here.
My dad used to point out that owners who used to spend two or three thousand dollars on a Yellow Pages ad were complaining about five hundred dollars in pay-per-click. It is a fair point. The question of what percentage of your budget and your time should go toward technology is a real one, and it is one that franchisors need to be helping owners answer, not leaving them to figure out alone.
The businesses that will look back on this moment well are the ones that did not chase AI as a trend or a headline. They are the ones that asked a simpler question: what is actually taking time in this business that should not be, and how do we fix that? Start there. The rest follows.
Key Takeaways
AI’s practical value for most franchise owners right now is in handling tedious, time-consuming tasks so they can focus on the strategic work that actually drives the business forward.
The biggest mistake is thinking AI can replace the relationship, management, and culture work at the core of a franchise business. It cannot.
It’s our franchise system. That means we have an obligation to lead AI adoption: give guidance, show the process, and help owners understand what the investment should look like.
Data and compliance are the piece most franchise systems haven’t fully figured out yet. You can’t be loose with internal data in an open-source AI environment.
Every AI tool needs a real ROI, whether that is time, money, or a clear investment in future capability. And when something isn’t working, pull the plug without ego.
The goal is not to lay off people. The goal is to make your people more proactive, which is a very different thing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should franchise owners be using AI right now?
Yes, and most already are to some degree. The question is not whether to use it, but how to use it. Start with the tasks that are taking up time that should be spent elsewhere: drafting routine communications, research, internal reporting, and build from there.
What is the biggest risk of AI for a franchise system?
Data exposure is the concern I take most seriously. Putting proprietary processes, internal data, or brand-sensitive information into open-source AI tools creates real risk. We have taken steps to address this, but it requires ongoing attention at both the corporate and location level.
Is AI going to replace franchise employees?
That is not my goal, and I do not think it should be anyone’s. The opportunity is to eliminate reactive, time-consuming work so that employees and owners can focus on proactive, relationship-driven, and growth-oriented work. That is a fundamentally different thing than a replacement.
How should a franchisor be supporting AI adoption across its system?
Start by giving clear guidance on where owners should be spending their time and attention. Then show them how the tools actually integrate. Then help them understand what reasonable investment looks like. You don’t have to have all the answers, but you do have to lead.