23 Colorado Franchises Among Best In North America: Entrepreneur

The business and management magazine Entrepreneur has released its 41st annual rankings of the top 500 franchises in North America.

Dunkin’ was ranked No.1 on the list, with Taco Bell and McDonald’s rounding out the top three.

Colorado serves as home to the headquarters of 23 of the best franchises in North America. Here's the list, grouped by city:

Understanding what a franchise is

In a business format, a franchiser provides a franchisee its trade name, products, services and generally an entire operating system for the business. In most cases, the franchisee pays a royalty and an initial fee for the rights to do business under the franchiser’s name.

A possibly easier way to think about it is that a franchise is a company that allows individual people not associated with the organization to open and manage a location under the company’s name and backing.

You can read more about the process of franchising on franchise.org.