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When we first started the company, I didn't have any thoughts of franchising. We just had company-owned stores.

Franchising implies a financial arrangement, and I am always pleased to consider those.

For a franchise system to work well, you really need people with an entrepreneurial mind-set because, while you have a large, overarching system that everybody has to work with, a lot of local issues have to be handled.

There's nothing magic about working with franchisees. What you have to do is help them improve their business.

Higher unemployment generally bodes well for franchising. People are looking for a new opportunity, and people who have jobs are a little less confident they'll always have a job.

From my point of view, what I really like, what I think is really terrific about my work, is that the company's had the opportunity to train literally thousands and thousands of brand new franchisees to successfully run their very first business.

How can you franchise hospitality?

By the end of 1978, we had 11 partners and six franchisees, we were operating in 22 cities, and we had about 6,000 clients. We had left Electronic Accounting Systems and were doing our own processing on our own computers.

Because the stores worked, franchisees wanted to build more stores. If your model works, folks who are happy with it will buy out the ones who aren't happy.

So, yeah, I think it had a major effect. I think in franchising younger people, it was just an idea that's never been trotted out before, but it makes perfectly good sense.