Ed Elson

The key to retail is that the owner is there.

So for example, the most successful franchise model, I would argue, or arguably,

So Panera, Starbucks, and Chipotle always had NPS scores of like 62 or 63.

And NPS is basically considered kind of the holy grail of consumer metrics.

And that is the number of people that would recommend it, strongly recommend it, versus people that wouldn't recommend it.

So it's sort of passion, consumer passion.

Chipotle, Panera, and Starbucks always around the same thing.

And then 10 points above that was Chick-fil-A.

I mean, just striking.

And Chick-fil-A's secret sauce, yeah, the chicken's fine.

It's a great product, but the other ones have a great product too.

It was that they had this really unique model where they have 25,000 people apply to be one of the 80 or 120 franchisees.

And they call from former military veterans to, and they have this really sophisticated means of trying to find somebody who they think is just passionate about the brand and will be on site every minute of every day.

There's all this data showing that a restaurant does not work if the owner isn't there a lot, whether it's shrinkage, making sure the bathrooms are clean, saying hi to consumers.

And so Chick-fil-A, where I'm headed with this, this isn't about a business model.

This isn't even about them competing with each other.

The newspapers made the same mistake.

The New York Times thought it was competing against the LA Times or the Boston Globe or the Chicago Tribune.

No, they were competing against a structural shift in consumer behavior.

And I want to acknowledge, I'm a hammer and everything I see is a nail, but I think this is all about, I think this has nothing to do with the franchise model.