Mention family offices and franchises, and most people still think of sports teams.

NFL. NBA. Premier League. 

But there is franchise activity in family offices today that has nothing to do with stadiums or broadcast rights.

It’s burgers, coffee, gyms, retail, childcare. Everyday businesses run well, generating cash day in day out, compounding for decades.

In a higher-rate, lower-forgiveness world, franchises are becoming one of the cleanest ways for family offices to own cash-generating operating platforms without pretending there’s a perfect exit around the corner.

Franchises sit in a rare middle ground. They’re not public markets. They’re not classic private equity. They are operating businesses wrapped in a system.

You don’t invent demand. You execute a proven model. And you improve it incrementally.

For family offices deploying permanent capital, that combination can be highly attractive. In fact, family offices invested in franchises have been reluctant to share their success stories. 

But there are some making truly incredible cash-on-cash returns. 

Patrick Buckley, a two-time franchise founder and host of the Empires podcast, says franchises like Wingstop, Jersey Mike's and Nothing Bundt Cakes historically return in the 30-50% range.

“The best franchises, when paired with a quality operator, provide remarkably consistent and healthy cash-on-cash returns that other investment vehicles would struggle to match.” 

Franchises flip the focus back to fundamentals. And they deliver daily revenue, visible costs and local pricing power. And perhaps most importantly, control.

You can see why many families now prefer owning great operating businesses to being a limited partner in blind pools.

A good modern example is British private equity legend Guy Hands.

In 2017, through his family office, Hands acquired the McDonald’s businesses across Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, becoming the Developmental Licensee for the Nordic region of McDonald's.

It wasn’t a typical private equity play, it was a personal, family-office investment.

As master franchisee, Hands controlled operations, capex, staffing, real estate, and expansion. McDonald’s provides the brand, the system, and the global demand engine.

Returns don’t rely on leverage or exit timing.

They come from site-level execution: Throughput, labor efficiency, property discipline, incremental expansion.

It’s a long-duration asset designed to compound.

That makes it a textbook family office move. No forced liquidity. No mark-to-market noise. Just steady cash generation from one of the most resilient consumer brands in the world.

Another example sits in plain sight, but is often overlooked because of its scale.

The Reimann family, via JAB Holding Company, has built one of the world’s largest collections of food and beverage franchises and franchise-like platforms.

Pret A Manger, Panera Bread, and a global coffee empire span multiple formats and geographies.

While not every asset is a pure franchise, the operating logic is the same.

Strong brands, repeat consumption, local execution.

JAB’s model leans heavily toward long-term ownership. Assets are improved operationally, expanded geographically, and held far longer than a typical PE cycle.

This is family office thinking at industrial scale.

The businesses throw off cash.
They employ tens of thousands of people.
They embed deeply into daily routines.

And they offer inflation resilience that purely financial assets struggle to match.

Franchises are certainly not about chasing the next concept or fashion. They build durable platforms around habits that don’t disappear in downturns.

Berkshire Hathaway also love franchises. 

Among its many operating businesses sits Dairy Queen, a franchise-heavy model generating steady cash flows across thousands of locations.

This doesn’t make the headlines in the way other Berkshire assets do, but it’s a franchise system that works with local operators, predictable demand and simple economics.

For Berkshire, it fits perfectly.

No urgency to sell. No pressure to optimize for quarterly optics. Just ownership of a business that does what it says on the tin.

It’s a reminder that franchises don’t need to be exciting to be valuable. They need to be dependable.

The pattern is consistent. Franchises give family offices exposure to operating businesses without product risk. They allow control without starting from zero. And they scale in a disciplined, accountable way.

They also lend themselves well to governance. You can build boards, track weekly KPIs, and structure incentives around cash, not paper gains.

For families thinking about next-generation involvement, franchises are also a practical training ground. They teach operations, people management, and capital discipline in a way few asset classes can.

And unlike many private funds, the exit is optional. You can hold forever, refinance, pay dividends and only sell if it makes sense.

That flexibility is a real advantage.

Buckley says a major misconception about franchises is that they have everything figured out, when in reality, franchising is a spectrum. 

“McDonald's is the most extreme version of a franchise, where yes, they pretty much do have their entire system and playbook figured out. Every little detail is taken care of, but they've been around for nearly a hundred years and have thirteen thousand locations.” 

He says even a franchise with twenty years of experience and a few hundred locations still has a lot of growth and lessons to learn.

For family offices exploring the space, he advises they pay careful attention to a few essential details. 

“The brand, their unit economics, and franchisor leadership matter more than anything else. I've met many talented operators who frankly picked mediocre brands with no momentum and it drags their upside down dramatically compared to picking winners.”

Franchises are not passive. Brand strength does not guarantee unit-level profitability. Bad sites stay bad and weak operators get exposed quickly. 

In fact, Buckley says the single biggest challenge with franchising is unit level profitability.

Beyond that, capex is real, recurring, and unavoidable. Remodels, tech upgrades, and system requirements must be underwritten properly.

Buckley says many franchises need to improve on technology.

“Tech is lagging in certain areas because the switching costs are so high in franchising that many brands are running on outdated tech stacks but can't afford to switch.” 

Most importantly, franchises live or die by people. If you can’t recruit, train, and retain strong operators, the model breaks down fast.

The families that succeed are the ones that treat franchises as operating companies, not yield products.

Franchises are becoming more important to family offices because they reflect a deeper recalibration.

They reflect less obsession with exits and more respect for cash.

Owning businesses people use every week is not glamorous. But it’s starting to look like one of the most rational forms of long-term wealth preservation.

And one that Buckley believes still offers much opportunity.

“There aren't that many great concepts out there - so at the brand level there is a gap in quality.” 

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