2 Cobb County Franchises Among Best: Entrepreneur

COBB COUNTY, GA—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.

Cobb County serves as home to the headquarters of two of the best franchises in North America:

Challenge Island: The company ranks #345

Based in Marietta, the company was founded by award-winning educator, author, and parenting/education journalist Sharon Duke Estroff in 2003. According to the company's website, Challenge Island is grounded in cutting edge educational thought and at the forefront of S.T.E.A.M. Education and 21st Century Learning.

Tapout Fitness: The company ranks #408

Founded in 2014, Tapout Fitness is part of the Tapout brand family. According to the company's website, the Tapout brand is owned by two media giants; Authentic Brands Group (ABG), a brand development, marketing and entertainment company, which owns a global portfolio of 50 lifestyle, sports, celebrity and entertainment brands, and World Wrestling Entertainment the preeminent provider of wrestling-based entertainment and one of the largest sports networks in the world.

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.

Methodology

To be considered for Entrepreneur’s rankings, franchises submitted a detailed application covering basic information about the company. Additionally, to be eligible, a franchiser must be seeking new franchisees in the United States or Canada and must have had a minimum of 10 units open and operating as of July 31.

The eligible franchisers were then scored based on more than 150 data points, and those with the highest cumulative marks became part of the Franchise 500.

Here are the top 10 franchises in the United States in 2020, according to Entrepreneur:

1. Dunkin’
2. Taco Bell
3. McDonald’s
4. Sonic Drive-In
5. The UPS Store
6. Ace Hardware
7. Planet Fitness
8. Jersey Mike’s Subs
9. Culver’s
10. Pizza Hut LLC

The full list of franchises on the 2020 list is available on Entrepreneur.