SUMMARY
The Franchise Development Specialist drives franchise growth, managing franchise recruiting, development activities, and new unit openings. This role builds relationships with franchisees and partners to support long-term growth and acts as a Brand Ambassador to manage marketing and communications related to franchise expansion. The Specialist coordinates cross-functional projects, tracking development progress, budgets, and events to achieve strategic goals.

NEW FRANCHISEE RECRUITMENT

• Support VP of Development in executing franchise recruitment processes, managing candidate sourcing, screening, and conversion.
• Drive project planning and tracking in CRM tool that helps to coordinate efforts across the team to ensure realization of key functional plans and goals.
• Assists with the preparation of presentations and materials required for internal and external meetings and presentations.
• Track recruitment progress and support franchisee candidate pipeline management.

NEW UNIT DEVELOPMENT

• Execute processes for new franchise openings in accordance with our New Store Opening playbook, coordinating with internal teams and franchisees on planning, design, and construction
• Manage development project updates, set up franchisee calls, and report on new unit progress.
• Serve as the key point of contact for development inquiries and projects.

FRANCHISE DEVELOPMENT

• Responsible for day-to-day management, administration and coordination of franchise related matters by partnering closely with Leadership, Operations, Legal, and Franchisees.
• Support existing franchisees on renewals, transfers, and closures.
• Provide support with reports to assess progress towards annual number of renewals, transfers, closures and associated revenue.

DEVELOPMENT MARKETING & PR

• Monitors and maintains development information on the brand website, marketing materials, public relations, and resources to ensure alignment with FDD.
• Partners with Leadership and Legal to update and evolve important information provided in the FDD or other brand communications. Must develop an understanding of the franchise agreement and franchise disclosure document.
• Follows up on development and franchising inquiries.
• Coordinate creation of marketing materials, development related articles and press releases, and other brand related PR to help generate awareness of new initiatives and new development opportunities.
• Attends select strategic partner meetings, industry conferences, and networking events to establish relationships and leverage key resources across the franchising industry and development community that can help to identify new franchise partnerships and opportunities.

QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor’s Degree with at least 3-5 years professional work experience or equivalent, preferably in a franchise corporate environment with an emphasis in cross-functional project management and event management particularly affiliated with real estate & new unit development, franchising, legal, finance and/or retail operations and administrative support.
• This is a high energy role! This candidate must be warm, outgoing and friendly, and enjoy engaging with internal and external business partners daily. Must have a track record of success driving collaboration cross-functionally to achieve results. Must have outstanding written and verbal communication and strong organizational skills with the ability to influence others, and drive prioritization and decisions. Must be highly analytical, strategic and demonstrate creative problem solving. Must be a self-starter, driven to achieve results.
• Knowledge of project management, real estate, new unit development and franchising related policies and procedures. Knowledge of law (real estate, franchise, contract, business), real estate and financial management/accounting preferred.
• Experience managing up and influencing functional leaders and teams, and a demonstrated track record of providing excellent service to external business partners and customers.
• Highly proficient in Microsoft Office (Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Project, Visio, Microsoft Dynamics). Experience with graphic design tools (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) is desired. Experience with Geospatial planning tools is helpful.