Design & Build

Do you need a new store design, central kitchen, value engineering, or other construction to prepare for scaling your brand and system? FSI collaborates with a host of amazing store and restaurant architects, engineers, and designers to thoughtfully plan and execute your brand’s unit design and  to streamline  your franchisee’s locations and design-build experience.

We provide newly-emerging franchisors with full support in the entire franchise development process.  We will collaborate with you every step of the way from Strategic Planning, Operations and Training,  Value Engineering and Automation, Legal and I.P., and Unit and Franchise-Level Marketing.

If you have a restaurant model, office model, or service business that has a physical location, it is likely that you have already taken at least a large part of your scaling journey by having a branded design, of which franchisees you take into your system will be required to replicate and build to your exacting specifications.  But is your current design beautiful and efficient enough to properly scale?

When we think about employing a restaurant architect and multiple general contractors to install our model in multiple locations, it is often evident that the franchise-able business needs a partial or complete design update in order to effectively bring the brand to multiple locations.  Having brand consistency and design-build scalability with reliable design and  contracting is essential for any brand requiring a physical location but is especially evident in the restaurant and central-kitchen space served by Franchise Science.

It is not unusual for a franchise-able brand getting ready to scale to already have multiple locations which are lacking full “brand continuity” in their corporate model, and therefore the need to invest in either one core design, or often multiple optional model variations to adapt to appropriate real estate comes to the forefront of franchisor needs.  For a restaurant or other “fixed-location” model, having multiple model variations, such as the need for a drive-thru, or a mall location may cause a multitude of pre-ordained design requirements to be completed, and construction  properly coordinated with franchisees and their local contractors to be beautifully assembled, with all necessary branding, design, and workflow requirements at the ready.

In addition to the general benefits of a beautiful and well-engineered location, there are multiple economic benefits to design continuity, especially as it applies to mass purchases of restaurant equipment and furniture type, interior design elements and art, and any other items to be purchased by franchisees to insure the continuity of multiple units and benefit from quantities of scale.

In many cases Franchise Science clients make design consulting a key starting point in their development if their physical models are not ready to scale in their current form.  Achieving the ideal design for the present while anticipating how newly-emerging technologies affect future franchise implementation is mission-critical, especially as it applies to value engineering in the new location design, automation utilized to reduce labor, and multiple workflow efficiencies which may not have been able to have been implemented in the initial corporate models.

We are living in the age of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics.  Large existing franchisors such as Chick-fil-A, KFC, and a host of burger and salad models are already heavily automating their local and central kitchens to reduce labor costs in both the “front of the house” and the “back of the house” depending on the level of service and other complexities.  Every issue of The Franchise Times, Restaurant Business, and other multi-unit media are flooding the franchise network pipelines with new stories every week about how various chains are re-inventing everything from how we experience drive-thru, to how perfectly the robot in the back makes any one of two hundred salad variations one hundred times hourly with no errors.

Although automation is taking wildly different forms depending on the needs of the various models, it is fiscally irresponsible to go into the design-build phase of your newly emerging franchise planning with no thought toward the brave new world of hyper-expensive labor, and how appropriate automation can solve this to a degree where your franchisee’s P&Ls can thrive in an economy where labor and inflationary pressures on food distribution are making future restaurant and service office economics require some form of re-balancing to be successful and profitable.

This is where the “Science” in Franchise Science comes in to play, because FSI is not a design firm.  We are a franchise consultancy that is responsible for planning and executing phases related to our client’s ultimate success, and the workflow and value-engineering aspects of a design are critical to client’s success.  FSI’s preferred restaurant architects collaborate closely with both engineers and automation and robotics companies who have proven valuable in solving for these issues in the present and are responsible to creating models which are flexible for future enhancements as they are proven out.  Franchising is about serving and supporting your successful franchisees, and a big part of that is being prepared to update and modify your existing system for the future.  It would be a mistake to assume automation is the entire answer to any given model.  However, FSI’s responsibility is to review each and every model in a newly emerging franchisor’s system, and to ensure a beautiful brand, system, and forward-moving design is entering the market for the interests of all concerned.

Your store model, restaurant model, or central kitchen may not only need a “facelift” prior to scaling, but a technology makeover as well to properly value engineer your offering for the future.  FSI works with the best architectural and engineering talent for your newly-emerging model to create beauty in your brand, reduce costs of materials, and evaluate and engineer the best process improvements for both the present and future store development.

Standing Offer: New FSI clients who are beginning their Strategic Planning (Phase-I) work and who are also seeking Store Design assistance (or)  Value Engineering/Automation assistance  are entitled to receive one (1)  on-site visit and review from one of our affiliated architects or design engineers at no cost.  This courtesy review is both encouraged and paid for by FSI with no design-contracting or other obligation to the client in any way.  The purpose of this ongoing offer  is to A) encourage great design and  value engineering regardless of the ultimate choice of designer hired,   B) give our design vendors an opportunity to seek a new client if it is a good fit with zero risk to our client, and for immediate benefit C) gather more data to be used by FSI immediately in client’s Strategic Franchise Business Plan, specifically identifying changes or design needs which will impact client’s cost and method of scaling.