Business 101: How a Franchise Works

A few months ago I read an article that bothered me, and it's been nagging at me ever since.  I don't even remember what the article was about, but I think it had to do with Apple stock paying a dividend.  The part that bothered me though, was the author's remark that successful companies like Apple and McDonald's should use their excess cash to pay their employees better rather than pay a dividend to their shareholders.  As far as Apple goes, I don't know enough about the situation to have an opinion on that.  However, I think this author was implying that the high school kid who asks you if you want fries with your Big Mac is an employee of McDonald's.  That is not necessarily true.  McDonald's is a franchise.  McDonald's and other franchises may have some corporate-owned stores, but they also have stores owned by private corporations, partnerships, or maybe your next-door neighbor.

Here's my overly-simplistic explanation of how a franchise works.  (For the sake of full disclosure, yes, my family is a franchisee, not of McDonald's but of another restaurant chain.  I am in no way intending to put down any franchise.  It can be a great business opportunity for those willing to work within the parameters of a franchise agreement.)  Basically, a franchisee buys the rights to run a business under the name of the franchisor (such as McDonald's).  The franchisee uses the approved business operations, locations, food vendors, decor, logos, etc., sells a product that is virtually identical to every other franchisee in the organization, and gets the advantages of shared advertising and name recognition.  The franchisor makes their money from sales at corporate-owned stores, but also from fees collected from the franchisees.  My quick Google search results told me that McDonald's charges a $45,000 one-time franchise fee plus 4% of gross sales.  I'm assuming from my franchise experience that the franchisees also pay separately for their share of regional or national advertising.  In our case (not McDonald's) this comes to about another 5% of sales.  Some McDonald's locations make a lot of money and some probably struggle to pay their bills every month, but McDonald's Corporation makes their money either way, although they certainly make less on the low-volume stores.

I've been guilty in the past of avoiding chain restaurants because I want to support local business people.  But the truth is, many chain restaurants are franchises, owned by people who are every bit as "local" as the owners of the mom-and-pop restaurant next door.  So if and when you ever get a dividend from your shares of McDonald's stock, don't feel like you're stealing from the kid behind the counter.  He probably doesn't actually work for McDonald's.

Adventures in New York

I've always been pretty sure that New York City would be someplace that I would absolutely hate.  I dislike crowds and noise and cities in general.  A few months ago Ashley asked me to come with her on an upcoming BYU trip to New York and for some reason I said yes.  I guess the thought of spending a few days on vacation with my daughter and the safety of seeing New York with a tour group combined to make me think it would be a good idea.  Actually, it was a great idea!

We flew from Salt Lake City to New York on April 21.  We stayed at the Hotel Edison, half a block from Time Square.  It was built in the 1920's and some of it hasn't been updated since then.  The art deco lobby was charming, the antiquated plumbing not so much.  However, it was comfortable, safe and clean, and the location was amazing.  I'd gladly risk a cold shower or two and stay there again.

This was my first impression of Time Square - lots of noise, lights and people, and I loved it!  We ate dinner at Juniors (known for cheesecake but I honestly can't recommend the club sandwich) then walked around and shopped for the rest of the evening.  

The touristy part of the tour started on Sunday.  We went to church in the morning, which is an amazing way to get away from the tourists and see what the locals are really like.  Then we took the ferry past the Statue of Liberty (we didn't get off) then to Ellis Island where we had time to wander around.  

Apparently I cut off the top of the torch in this picture, but in my defense it was windy and rainy and I pretty much just whipped out the camera, snapped the picture, then ran for cover.  Also, we were pretty jet lagged on Sunday, in addition to being extra tired from sleeping in a strange hotel room with people we barely knew and being woken up by sirens and other strange city noises all night long.  That must be why we spent over an hour at Ellis Island and I don't think I can tell you one important thing we saw.  In fact, the whole time I kept getting confused and thinking we were at Alcatraz.

This is me at Ellis Island.  I look a lot more awake than I felt.  

Next stop, 9/11 Memorial.  It's a beautiful memorial, with two huge waterfalls in the footprints of the twin towers (we're standing next to one of them).  There is lots of green open space, and I think when it's finished it will be a place where people come to stop, think, and remember.  At the moment, getting to the memorial is a little less than peaceful because you have to wind your way through barricades, go through security, and show your ticket several times before you actually see where you're trying to go.  Hopefully when it's done the process will go a little more smoothly.

On Monday we started the "school" part of our adventure.  The students in the group had a variety of majors, but went under the umbrella of "fashion students".  There were some in retail, some in education, and some in costume design.  They were all in some way related to my major (fashion merchandising) so I really enjoyed being with this group of students, parents and professors who share my interests.  We started with a visit to the Tobe Report, a fashion forecasting service.  After a quick stop in the financial district (NYSE, Federal Reserve, tall gray buildings, narrow streets, and a tour of Federal Hall where George Washington took his oath of office on April 30, 1789) we moved on to an interior design showroom where I learned that there are enough people who will drop $40,000 for a dining room table that there are showrooms full of such tables. 

I should mention that we got around the city by subway.  We had a very detailed itinerary that gave us specific directions such as:  "Walk east on 47th St. to subway entrance.  Board the Downtown N Local to the 34th St. Station (2 stops)."  Luckily we had a guide with us at all times who taught us how to use our Metro cards (don't mess up when you swipe it because you won't be able to swipe it again for 18 minutes!) and told us when to get on and off the train.  The subway wasn't scary at all, not like in the movies where the lights flash on and off, the trains run into each other, and every passenger gets mugged or murdered or rescued by an action hero.  However, I never could figure out which train we were on or which stop we were coming to.  Several girls in our group ventured out on their own and ended up in Queens when they were trying to get back to the hotel, so I'm obviously not alone in my confusion.

We started Tuesday by going to a costume shop.  This is Stitch's foot from a Disney on Ice thing.  We also saw some Lion King costumes.  It was fun to hear the stories of so many Broadway costumes.  Next was Women's Wear Daily, then Fashion Institute of Technology, then some time for shopping!  

For Project Runway fans, like Ashley and me, going to Mood was a dream come true.  We didn't buy any fabric but we had fun looking at it all.  The highlight, however, was seeing Swatch, the resident dog.  Doesn't he look like he's going to bite me if I don't get that camera out of his face? 

Tuesday night we saw Wicked, then waited at the stage door to get autographs from and pictures with the actresses who played Galinda and Elphaba.  Well, Ashley got pictures with them since that's her thing, and since this isn't her blog I'm not posting those pictures.  This is supposed to be about my trip, right?

Wednesday - more appointments.  First, Anna Sui boutique where we heard a lovely story from a Chinese immigrant who gave up her career as an actuary in China, moved to the US and took a job carrying huge rolls of fabric up and down six flights of stairs in a building without an elevator, was befriended by Anna Sui, and worked her way up in the fashion industry.  Then we had time for lunch and a little shopping in Chinatown, then a tour of Macy's flagship store.  It pretty much looks like any Macy's store on the inside, only bigger, but it's being remodeled and it should be beautiful when it's done.  Luckily they're keeping most of the wooden escalators.

After Macy's we toured Anne Klein Suits, walked through Central Park, then went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  There were various subway trips in between there, and at one point we traveled through Grand Central Station (or was that yesterday?) but the subway experience is all a big blur to me.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art was kind of a blur too, as we tried to not get lost as we moved from section to section.  We tried to see as much as we could as quickly as we could, before our next adventure, which was a solo bus trip.  Ok, not exactly solo since there were two of us, but no tour guide, only the somewhat vague directions to take the 1, 2, 3 or 4 bus down 5th Avenue to 47th.  The bus ride turned out to be easy and uneventful, and we made it back to the TKTS booth in Time Square in time to get half price tickets to Newsies.

If you haven't seen the movie Newsies, go rent it now.  If you can find it anyway - it came out in 1992 I think.  It was great then, and it's even better on Broadway.  In fact, if you're going to be in New York before August you should really see this show before it closes.  I wish I could see it again.

Thursday, our last day, we were on our own until it was time to take the bus to the airport.  (This was a tour bus, not a city bus!)  We had one last breakfast at the deli by our hotel then took off on foot to the Empire State Building.  It was much easier to walk the twelve blocks than try to figure out the buses or subway.  

It would have been better to see the view from the Empire State Building earlier in our trip so I'd have a better idea where everything is.  This is facing south-ish.  The tall building on the right is the new World Trade Center building which is currently under construction.

By this point we were pretty much shopped out but we still had a lot of time to kill before we left.  We walked to Rockefeller Center, looked around, got some lunch, then walked back to Time Square and ate the hugest pieces of cheesecake I'd ever seen.  I guess New Yorkers have no concept of appropriate serving size when it comes to their cheesecake.  Just kidding, kind of.  I love cheesecake but I barely made a dent in my slice.  

This trip changed my life, but I'm not sure how just yet.  For a few days I got to live in a culture that was new to me, with people who share my interests, dreams and values.  I experienced a new kind of relationship with my daughter as I saw her take charge and look out for me when we were doing things she was more familiar with.  I'm a different person than I was a couple weeks ago and I'll never be the same again.  In my head I keep singing the line from Wicked: "I have been changed for good".

Here's one last view of the city as we were leaving.  It was sad to leave, but I'll be back..... someday.

And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street

I've been putting off posting anything for weeks because I've been in a February Mood - you know, that uneasiness and dissatisfaction caused by those warm spring-like days that are then followed by a good dose of winter.  Nothing seemed to be going right and everything was causing me too much stress.  Unfortunately (I guess) our mild winter has extended well into March and it's still not completely spring.

One of my many stresses has been my running.  I finished the couch to 5K (yay for me!) then I got sick and had to take it easy for a week or so.  Since then I've felt unmotivated to run, but I've done it anyway - very slowly and badly.  It's been very discouraging.  I decided that today I should start the Bridge to 10K which starts off where the other program left off.  10 minutes of running + 1 minute walking, repeated 4 times, plus a 5 minute warm-up and 5 minute cool-down is a huge time commitment for me, but something had to change so I thought I'd try.  I run at home.  About 8 laps around my driveway is one mile.  There are lots of interesting things out in the country but after doing this since October I think I've pretty much seen everything there is to see from the driveway.  Then today, on about my 4th lap, I looked up and saw a zebra.  Well I suppose it's not really a zebra but a zebra crossed with a horse or donkey or something like that, and it was just as surprising as seeing a real zebra.  Some new neighbors moved in this weekend and we saw their full horse trailer, but never saw what came out of it.  It was really a pleasant surprise and it made my run go much better.

I carry my phone in my pocket when I run so I got a picture of my new friend, but I had to zoom in too much so it didn't turn out very good.  Hopefully he'll get used to seeing me and will come closer to the fence one of these days.

My Crazy Heart

I've finally come out and told people that I've been trying to run.  I don't run very fast or very long and I've been struggling a little with how weak and tired I feel while I'm running.  I haven't been gasping for breath or wheezing or anything, but the sensation was kind of like being out of breath.  On Wednesday, just for fun, I took my pulse right after I finished running.  It was 183.  That seemed a little high but I wasn't really sure.

Thursday I went to the doctor for a routine check-up.  I told her I was feeling more out of breath than I thought I should when I run.  She went through a series of questions about my breathing, then she asked about my  heart rate.  I told her what it was, then told her I recently lost a cousin because of an enlarged heart.  She sent me straight to cardiology for an EKG, then to radiology for an x-ray, then had me come straight back to see her.  (By the way, I love my health plan - all this was under the same roof and only took half an hour or so.)  She looked at my EKG print-out and said it looked good, then showed me my x-ray on her monitor and said my heart looked healthy and normal.  Then she ordered a treadmill stress test for the next day.

Friday morning I had my stress test.  I wish I had watched a youtube video of a stress test ahead of time so I would have known what to expect.  I was supposed to fast for 4 hours before the test, which seemed like no big deal because I hadn't been eating breakfast before I run and the test was in the morning.  I just ate dinner as usual on Wednesday then went to the doctor Thursday morning without eating.  That was my first mistake.  I should have gotten up at 5 am and eaten something, or scheduled my test for later in the day.  They were running a little late and by the time I got on the treadmill I hadn't eaten for 16 hours. My next mistake was being afraid to start running.  They kept speeding up the treadmill and I kept walking faster and faster.  I was afraid if I started to run my pace would be off and I'd fall off the treadmill.  You know, kind of like when you step on or off those moving sidewalks at the airport - or am I the only one who almost falls every time?  Anyway, lets just say the test was definitely stressful!  I had to ask to stop which was kind of humiliating.  The nurse practitioner who administered the test said I was too out of shape to run and I should just walk so I didn't stress my heart so much.  I really didn't like her.

Now back to the no breakfast thing for a minute.  I've learned from my own experience that eating dairy products before exercising doesn't work well for me, and from a friend's experience that eating a box of cheeze-its before exercise isn't good either.  Somehow I took that all to mean that I shouldn't eat before I run.  A friend of mine suggested I eat oatmeal before running, so on Saturday that's what I did.

Saturday morning I asked my husband to run with me.  We ran along the creek by our house, which was great because it's too secluded for me to run there alone.  I had oatmeal in my stomach and my new heart monitor strapped to my chest.  It was a warm, beautiful morning.  I set the monitor to beep when my heart rate got above 180, which was really annoying because it beeped the entire 25 minutes I ran.  I maxed out at 194, but was able to hold a conversation with Rick the whole time and I really didn't feel tired.  In fact, I felt amazing!  I think it was the oatmeal.

I ran again this morning, a little longer and still pretty slow.  My heart rate was between 180 and 190.  I didn't feel as good as I did on Saturday, but it was colder with a little bit of rain and wind and that kind of annoyed me. I didn't feel overly exhausted or breathless.  Yep, definitely the oatmeal.

Yes, I was disobeying the orders of that dumb nurse practitioner, but this morning I emailed my doctor and gave her the details of my last two runs.  She then gave me permission to run as long as I slow down to a walk if I feel lightheaded or completely out of breath.  It sounds like a good compromise to me.  For now I'm going to keep using the heart monitor and I'm keeping a journal of how long I run, my heart rate, how I feel, etc.  We'll see if my heart rate lowers as I get in better shape.  It may just be that I have a freakishly fast heart.

C25K Update

I've been torn between documenting my running progress then having to admit failure, and not documenting it then not having a good story to go along with my success.  My fear of public failure has won out so far, so other than a couple brief mentions on this blog I've kept mostly quiet on the subject and only told a few people.  Now that I've had some degree of success I think I can share what I've accomplished.

I started in the middle of October.  (Here's my first post.) The first week wasn't too bad, except that I was so sore after the first day that I hobbled around for a couple weeks.  The second week was a little harder, 6 90-second jogs alternating with walking.  Looking back that sounds so easy, but at the time it definitely wasn't.  Sometime in those first two weeks I read somewhere that it was ok to repeat weeks if you didn't feel comfortable moving up to the next level.  I think that's the only thing that kept me going.  I don't remember which weeks I repeated or how many times I repeated them, but last week (which was somewhere around my 14th week) I was still on the week 5 workout.  The week 5 day 3 assignment was to walk for 5 minutes, run for 20 minutes, then walk for 5 minutes.  Honestly, I didn't think I'd ever be able to do that!  But last Friday I finally decided to try.  And guess what - it didn't kill me!  It didn't even make my legs sore!  Sure I was out of breath a little, but that's what happens when you run.  This week I did all the week 6 workouts.  Today I ran for 25 minutes.  Monday I'll tackle week 7, which is three more 25-minute runs.  Week 8 is 28-minute runs, week 9 is 30-minute runs, then I'm done with the program and I can do whatever I want, as long as I keep running three times a week.

These are my new friends.  I bought them after meeting my goal of walking / running for three months.  I almost feel like I should name them, but I'm not sure if a pair of shoes gets one name or if each shoe gets its own name.  I hope to spend a couple of good years with these shoes and wear them out.  I can't say I love running.  I don't even really like it.  I might actually hate it while I'm doing it, at least for the first 5 - 10 minutes.  I love the feeling I have when I'm done, though.  When I've accomplished something I didn't think I could do, something I couldn't do a few months ago.  I love that feeling so much that I almost can't wait until Monday, when I get to run again.

Happy New Year

I thought I should post something at the beginning of the year for no other reason than to hold myself accountable for what I may or may not do this year.  I'm not making any resolutions because that implies changing my life in some way and I pretty much like my life the way it is.  I do, however, have a short to-do list. Or maybe it's really more of a keep-doing list.

1. I'm going to keep exercising. My couch to 5k is going very slowly, but at least it's still going.  After almost 3 months I'm only on week 5 of the program, but that's mostly because I've been repeating weeks, not skipping my workout.  As a reward, if I'm still doing this in 2 weeks I'm going to buy myself a good pair of running shoes.  I thought I'd put my reward in the middle of January to make sure I stay motivated through any winter weather we might have.  There were a couple of below-freezing days in December (or was it November?) and I survived those with a couple extra layers of clothing, but I still haven't decided what I'll do if it rains.

2.  I'm going to keep sewing, although I have no specific plans in place yet.  I have a couple of projects I need to work on for Ashley this month then I'll do something for myself.  I have some vague ideas but I'm not ready to commit to any of them yet.

3.  I'm going to make bread.  Lots of bread.  This was pretty much our dinner last night:



I bought the book "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day" and I'm having lots of fun with it.  Now we can have warm bread for dinner almost every night.  Good thing I'm running, to work off some of this bread, right?

4.  I'm going to clean my desk.  Ok, that's a to-do item, not a keep-doing item, but I thought I should put it on here anyway.  Every morning I say I'm going to clean my desk and then I don't do it.  I'm pretty sure I can manage to get it done sometime during 2012.  I want to clean my sewing room too.  And maybe paint it and redecorate a little.  That doesn't get it's own number on the list though because it's more of a wishful-thinking item.  I just thought I'd throw it in here so if I actually do it I can brag a little.

That's it.  That's as big as I'm going to dream this year.  Now I have to end this post because the picture of the bread is making me hungry.  Happy New Year everyone!!