Renaissance in Franchising

Over the past year I've been seeing an incredible surge in franchise acquisition and build-out interest. Largely a result of 1) AI anxiety and 2) PE saturation in the lower middle market (used to be able to get a mom & pop HVAC biz for 3-4.5x EBITDA - good luck finding something for less than 7x now). People still have this misconception that franchises = restaurants. Only ~25% of franchise systems are actually QSRs while there are hundreds of brands for education (early childhood centers, swim schools, ABA clinics), home and commercial services (restoration, mechanical trades, pest control, paint), beauty and wellness (waxing, coolsculpt), gyms & fitness (pilates, yoga studios) and lots of other verticals with robust end-markets. The amazing thing is that franchise systems that grow correctly have the perfect built-in expansion playbook and are far less risk-prone than most SMBs. Folks are catching on so we've been spending a lot of our time helping searchers and entrepreneurs tee up SBA financing with lenders who actually understand the franchise model. A lot of that edge comes from sitting on analytical data we've derived from +1,600 US franchisors so we can pressure test and model out the unit economics and bechmark between a###-###-#### Junk Removal vs Junkluggers or compare Servpro vs PuroClean vs Restoration 1. We've done all this for both new franchisees that are starting out as well as existing ones looking to expand (de-novo or through M&A). Curious what others are seeing re: franchises. Always happy to connect and talk more about the space at redacted