3 Gwinnett Franchises Among Best In North America: Entrepreneur

NORCROSS, 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.

Norcross and Duluth serves as home to the headquarters of three of the best franchises in North America:

Kids 'R' Kids Learning Academies: The company ranks #109

Based in Duluth, the company was founded in 1988. Since its launch, Kids ‘R’ Kids has since blossomed into a world-wide corporation helping small business owners bring a first class preschool to their communities around the nation and around the world with multiple locations even in China.

Floor Coverings International: The company ranks #154

Based in Norcross, Floor Coverings International is a mobile floor-covering franchise that lets customers shop at home for hardwood, laminate and tile flooring, carpet and area rugs, and window coverings. The company's mobile van showrooms hold more than 3,000 styles and colors of name-brand products for residential and commercial use.

Mighty Auto Parts: The company ranks #378

Founded in 1963, Mighty Auto Parts started out as a network of local and regional suppliers to the automotive service industry. From the beginning, Mighty has offered a direct-sourcing model for preventive maintenance, common-use auto parts, shop supplies, oil, chemicals, and lubricants for vehicles. Mighty began franchising in 1970. In 1993, automotive-related service companies began adding Mighty franchises to diversify with a related company and complement their existing operations by employing Mighty's business model.

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.