O’ the glory of franchises!

Depending on your mindset, the word franchise can denote anything from fast food to football. In reality, it’s a strategic alliance between groups of people who have specific relationships and responsibilities with a common goal to dominate – fast food to football. But it’s a heck of a lot more than that. It’s growth and an economic driver. It also adds to a community’s nuance and the enrichment of society’s daily life.

The people who create a franchise business, are if not building a better mousetrap, they’re offering up a darn good new version that people will continue to beat the door down for – it’s a trillion dollar a year industry; that’s trillion with a T.

You know the standard models for the popular franchise industries.

Food Service has McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and Subway.
But it also has butcher shops and chocolate shops, and school lunch programs.

Cleaning Services connote home and office cleaning.
But there is also recycling, vehicle cleaning, and crime scene clean up businesses. Think about it, somebody’s got to clean up after the investigation is over.

There are franchises that will make your office building smell good and franchises that will shred your personal documents.

There are franchises that will humanly remove migrating geese from your lawn or golf course and franchises that will rent you a moped.

It’s brilliant and beautiful and it’s open to all takers!

I don’t usually feature these types of franchises because of how common they are. I prefer to open your mind to opportunities you may have never even thought of to be franchised. Periodically, I’m going to devote an entry to a niche business franchise. One that I think is cool and one that can make you money.

This week’s feature – Micro winery!

And to show you how brilliant these niche businesses can be, I want to start off with one that few people would even believe exists; a micro-winery franchise. That’s right, a micro-winery and you don’t have to own a large tract of rural land or even grow one grape. These wineries are located in urban, populated areas, bringing the winery to the people!

This wine producing Winery & Bistro outsources the agricultural parts of the business to a global network of growers. The “grape-must” or crushed grapes is simply imported from vineyards worldwide; plus, as a new franchisee, there’s no waiting for your wine to ferment. The franchise headquarters has a very large production facility to supply their start-ups with finished wine. However, over the first year of your business, you become an independent producer of wine.

As an owner, you’ll make many of the popular varietals, including Merlots, Cabs and Chardonnays, as well as, harder-to-find wines like Barolos, Gewurztraminers, Pinotages, Petit Verdot and Ports. You’ll also have a lineup of wines that are found nowhere else, like their very popular Peach Apricot Chardonnay and Cranberry Malbec.

It doesn’t have to stop there. In addition to wine sales by the bottle and glass, you can also offer:

• Bistro-style food, appetizers, and desserts
• Custom labeling
• Bottling experience
• Wine Club
• Private Parties and Events
• Wholesale Sales

With as little as 2500 square feet of retail space, you can have an urban winery. The gross profit margins on the wine produced by their franchisees is above 80% and you can open one for as little as $230,000. The average total cost ranges between $350k – $500k. This franchise is SBA approved and can be run Semi-Absentee. This is just one of many niche franchise opportunities that are out there and waiting to open in a new market and all of them can be owned and operated by you.