Franchise or Direct? Choosing an Operating Model for Europe
Every operator eventually faces the same fork: keep operating every station yourself, or bring in franchisees and sub-operators to grow faster. Neither answer is universally right, but the trade-offs are predictable.
The case for direct operations
You keep 100% of station revenue, you control venue quality, and every lesson from the field lands in your own team. The price is capital and management bandwidth: every new district needs your money, your people and your attention. Direct is the natural model for your home city and any market you know intimately.
The case for franchising
A good franchisee brings three things you cannot buy quickly: local venue relationships, local presence for maintenance, and their own capital for hardware. In return they keep most of the rental revenue while you earn from hardware margin, platform fees and a revenue share. You grow into cities you could never staff, and your risk per city drops sharply. The cost is control: a careless partner damages the brand you built.
What makes franchise networks actually work
- Software with real multi-tenant support: each partner needs their own dashboard, tariffs and payouts, with you keeping network-wide oversight.
- Automated revenue splits: if payouts require spreadsheets, disputes are only a matter of time.
- A written playbook: venue standards, service response times and brand rules agreed before the first station ships.
- A pilot period: start every partner with a small batch and expand only on demonstrated performance.
The hybrid most networks converge on
Run direct where you are strong, franchise where partners are stronger, and let the data referee. A mature European network commonly looks like this: the founding city direct, three to five partner cities, one shared platform underneath.
Bottom line: direct proves the model; franchising scales it. The order matters more than the choice.
