As the mythology of effortless growth fades, franchises move into a more exacting era

The conversations around franchising no longer resemble the ones from a decade ago. They feel steadier now, more grounded, touched by the kind of lived-in realism that comes only after running a business through volatility, inflation, labour scarcity, and shifting consumer appetites.

In this month’s issue, we speak to four franchise leaders who, on the topic of growth, do not instinctively reach for ambition or scale; instead, they reach first for operations.

And while each founder carries a different history, their reflections rhyme. Shao Rong Lee, owner of Supergreen, remembers the optimism that coloured his early years — years before his first franchise collapsed under the weight of expectation.

“I was being sold the dream of success,” he says, recalling how quickly optimism can sour when reality refuses to keep pace. That memory still shapes the way he approaches growth today, gently reminding him that the mechanics beneath a brand matter as much as the appetite for expansion.

The story repeats in other forms. At Lil’ but Mighty, co-founder Lily Chew describes the discipline required to preserve a brand’s soul as it multiplies: the deliberate meetings, the slow alignment of values, the honesty that precedes any contract. Hers is a reminder that growth must sit atop clarity rather than ambition alone. “Franchising makes starting easier, but it is by no means easy.”

The cost of scale

As these founders describe their experiences, a subtle narrative emerges. The centre of gravity in franchising has shifted. The old assumption — that growth is a natural consequence of demand — has given way to a more measured truth. Growth now exposes a brand’s weaknesses faster than it amplifies its strengths.

The cracks appear earliest in operations: inconsistent training, fragmented systems, poorly enforced SOPs, ad-hoc communication channels, the kind of improvisation that works for five outlets but collapses at fifteen.

This is where someone like Hsien Naidu, who has spent two decades diagnosing and repairing these fractures, offers a different vantage point. She describes the failure pattern with a kind of gentle precision: “More than half of them failed when they went overseas… because they couldn’t sustain the success of their franchisees abroad.”

She does not mention branding, marketing, or menu innovation. Instead, Naidu points to something far more mundane — the lack of a shared platform to keep everyone aligned. In her view, franchising breaks not because people stop caring, but because they care in different directions, armed with other information and responding to various versions of the truth.

And so, the work of 2026 feels less like chasing expansion and more like harmonising a complex ecosystem. TreeAMS — the software she developed to solve these fractures — emerged from this realisation.

“Businesses need the ability to pull different types of information seamlessly into one platform,” she explains, grounding the point in something deceptively simple: clarity. Without integration, franchisors fly blind, and franchisees drift, each making decisions that slowly diverge from the brand they thought they signed up for.

It becomes clear, listening to these leaders, that the operational reckoning is not a technological one alone. It is human. Franchising relies on people far more than the model suggests, and those people bring their own complexities — ambitions, frustrations, fatigue, pride. Russell Harrison, CRO and co-founder of Spartans Boxing Club, understands this intimately.

His model thrives on community, a dimension far harder to codify than SOPs or checklists. “Community is culture and culture is the soul of the business,” he says, revealing how a boxing gym can feel like a sanctuary rather than a commodity. 

Strength through structure

This emphasis on people brings texture to the conversation. Franchisees who misread the emotional demands burn out early. Staff turnover disrupts consistency. A misaligned partnership drains morale across an entire network. It becomes apparent that operations, at their core, are not about systems but about the interactions those systems are designed to support. 

Training becomes a form of relationship-building. Audits become a form of encouragement rather than policing. SOPs become a form of care — a way of guaranteeing that the brand’s promise survives every shift, every outlet, every new team.

By the time these founders turn to the future, the mood feels steady rather than anxious. Franchising in 2026 does not carry the euphoria of its earlier years, but it holds something sturdier: a sense of proportion.

Operators now understand that growth must match operational maturity; that scale without alignment invites collapse; that the smallest unit of the network — one outlet, one team, one franchisee — determines the health of the whole.

There is also a quieter realism forming. Expansion remains desirable, but only for brands that can sustain their own weight. Rents will remain high, labour will remain tight, and consumers will remain discerning. None of this can be solved by scale alone. What will matter instead is the discipline to maintain consistency, the humility to build slowly, and the foresight to invest in systems that enable clarity.

The era of discipline

In this light, franchising does not look diminished. It looks clarified — stripped of illusion, anchored in practice, ready for a more exacting decade. The founders driving this next phase no longer speak of growth as a sprint. They talk of it as a long-distance effort, paced and deliberate, sustained by systems that work and people who understand why those systems matter.

The reckoning, then, is not punitive. It is instructive. Franchising enters 2026 less dazzled by the idea of expansion and more attuned to the quiet mechanics who make expansion durable. Every outlet, every franchisee, every team member contributes to the integrity of the whole. When those pieces move in concert, the model still flourishes. And when they do not, the consequences quickly reveal themselves.

Either way, the truth is the same: the future of franchising runs through operations — not as an afterthought, but as the discipline that holds everything else together.