Microfranchising

Microfranchising is a business model that adapts the concepts of traditional franchising to very small enterprises, typically in developing countries, through the systemization and replication of micro-enterprises: small businesses that can be reliably copied by following a proven, standardized set of marketing and operating practices. The Acumen Fund describes it as a development tool that borrows the basic mechanics of traditional franchising while deliberately prioritizing entrepreneurial opportunities for economically disadvantaged people, with the underlying goal of promoting economic advancement by scaling a proven business model among people at the base of the economic pyramid and giving people who lack formal business training a path into self-employment. Its defining features are replicability, sustainability and social impact: in developing economies, microfranchising is aimed at what is sometimes called the necessity entrepreneur, offering a structured job opportunity to people without traditional entrepreneurial training by handing them a simplified version of an already-successful franchise concept, and the model is generally grouped alongside microfinance as part of the broader social enterprise movement.