Jericho Franchise Among Best In North America: Entrepreneur

SYOSSET, NY—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.

Jericho also serves as home to the headquarters of one of the best franchises in North America. The honor goes to Nathan's Famous Inc., which ranks 286 on the list.

Polish immigrant Nathan Handwerker took his wife Ida's recipe for hot dogs and started selling them from a stand in Coney Island in 1916. The Nathan's Famous hot dog eating contest that started that same year continues to be held every July 4th to this day. Al Capone, Jimmy Durante and Cary Grant were regular customers, and FDR had Nathan's Famous hot dogs served to the king and queen of England in 1939. Nathan's Famous became a public company in 1970, and began franchising in 1988. In addition to hot dogs, the menu offers hamburgers, chicken, cheesesteaks and fries.

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.