Small Bizeo, Taking a "Wall Street Approach" to Franchising

Have you ever wanted to own a Subway or McDonald's

restaurant?

If so, there's a new website for that:

. Developed with the intention of helping people acquire a piece of the small business pie, Small Bizeo is considerably different from other advice channels. “Small Bizeo was born out of the need for more information,” Kal Gullapalli, the CEO and co-founder of Small Bizeo, told Benzinga. “We started with a blog called

back in January. We started reporting the pros and cons of the franchise industry. You know, talking about which franchises were bad [and] which were actually good.” After reporting on a few controversial topics, including

and

, Gullapalli says that The Franchise Hound started to get a “pretty solid response.” “Our traffic was going up,” said Gullapalli. “People started appreciating the information we were revealing. So we felt that there was a much bigger need for information on franchising.” That information is invaluable – and harder to come by than most people think. “Unlike the stock market, where you have 10-Ks, 10-Qs, conference calls, plus hundreds of analysts reviewing and rating Microsoft

and Apple

, you just don't have that in the franchise space,” Gullapalli explained. “That's what we are – we take kind of a Wall Street approach to franchising.”

When it comes to gathering information, Gullapalli says that there are several data points Small Bizeo examines. “One is [that] all franchises put together an annual report,” notes Gullapalli, who worked on Wall Street before opening Small Bizeo. “We analyze the heck out of that and focus on some really important characteristics, such as how many lawsuits go back and forth between a franchise and a franchisee.” And that's not all. Gullapalli also looks at the source of where the product is coming from. “In the case of Quiznos, [the company] owns the supply chain, which is bad in their case because they inflated prices to their franchisees, putting them at a competitive disadvantage to guys like Subway.” Further, Small Bizeo looks at the economics. “Sometimes the company will [reveal] how the franchise is doing,” said Gullapalli. “If that's not a good enough sample, we'll actually do full public reviews. We'll talk to a huge sample of franchisees to find out where these guys are, what kinds of numbers are they doing on average.” Finally, Gullapalli says that Small Bizeo will “put everything together and create reports so that people can look at the full picture.”

Before getting started, Gullapalli insists that the first thing any prospective small business owner should do is “figure out what industry they have a passion for.” “It may not be food,” he said. “It could be a more service-based business, but you really have to love what you sell. Otherwise it's just not going to work.” “Once they figure that out – let's say, for example, that you really love sandwiches,” Gullapalli continues. “If you look at the sandwich sector, specifically franchising, there's about 20 different options. At that point you have to figure out, ‘Where do I wanna be? Where does my family wanna be? And where do I want to grow this empire?' If there's a Subway on every block, which is pretty much the way it is at this point, you have to look at, maybe this concept isn't the right one. Maybe it's [a company who is not yet here], and whittle down to a few concepts that make sense in your regional area. Then you start doing your due diligence.”