Local Franchises Editing and Proofreading Services

A franchisee wants to run a half-price offer for the local school's fundraising week, put a different photograph on their window, and stop selling the product nobody in this town buys. Two of those are fine, one is not, and the franchise agreement addresses all three in a clause about brand standards that could be read either way. So they ask, and wait nine days, and the school week has passed.

We edit what franchisors and franchisee networks produce — local marketing and pricing autonomy documentation, brand standards and their boundaries, approval processes and turnaround commitments, local advertising fund and its use documentation, product range and local variation policies, operations manual sections on local decisions, franchisee communications and bulletins, territory and cross-border trading guidance, performance and support documentation, and franchisee-facing explanations of why a standard exists. Our editors work on the boundary between the brand's decisions and the franchisee's.

The autonomy statement is what determines whether a network moves quickly or asks permission, and its failure is a brand standards clause that covers everything and decides nothing. A franchisee who cannot tell whether a decision is theirs will either ask about everything or stop asking altogether, and both are worse than a clear boundary. We write these so the three categories are stated explicitly — decisions that are entirely the franchisee's, decisions that need approval with a stated turnaround, and decisions that will never be approved — since a franchisee who knows the third category exists stops wasting the network's time on it; so the reason behind each standard is given where it is not obvious, because a franchisee who understands that the photograph rule protects a licensing agreement will comply and one told it is a brand standard will resent it; so pricing autonomy is stated precisely, covering discounting, local promotions, matching a competitor and any floor, as this is the most contested area in most networks; so the approval route names a person and a working-day commitment, given that an approval process with no deadline is a refusal; so the local advertising spend rules state what counts and what does not; so the range decisions are addressed honestly, including whether a franchisee may delist a poor seller; and so the escalation route for a franchisee who thinks a standard is wrong is named. Statements written this way produce networks that act locally without fragmenting.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including agreements, network communications and franchisee correspondence. We are editors rather than franchise, legal or brand advisers, and we offer no view on agreements, standards or autonomy. What we can do is put every decision in one of three boxes.