Everything You Need To Know About The BFA HSBC Franchise Awards

Pip Wilkins, chief executive of the British Franchise Association, explains what’s great about the bfa HSBC Franchise Awards

When you’re considering becoming a business owner, deciding where to invest your hard earned capital can be difficult.

You may have already decided that franchising is the right route for you, after all it does offer training, ongoing support and a community of fellow franchisees to lean on. However, despite the many benefits of business format franchising, there’s significant due diligence you should carry out prior to parting with any money or signing any legal document.

Now, you may be wondering how the British Franchise Association HSBC Franchise Awards can help you with this analysis. Let me elaborate.

High calibre

The bfa’s awards are only open to bfa members, which provides an immediate idea of the calibre of both the finalists and winners of our awards programme.

All entrants have to pass our rigorous accreditation process to become members and the sifting and judging process for the awards takes this to another level. Over a number of days the judges review and deliberate over the entries, taking into consideration the company’s finances, systems and processes and looking for the spark that sets them apart from the rest.

How does this benefit you? By identifying and showcasing exceptional brands from within the UK franchising sector through benchmarking entrants against one another.

The judging process provides brands with incredibly high standards to aspire to and achieve, while actively encouraging franchisors to think outside the box and find innovative ideas, products and processes that will benefit their franchisees.

If you decide to invest in a franchise with a finalist or winner from our awards, you must complete your research and have the franchise agreement checked by a solicitor who specialises in franchising.

The accolade of meeting or exceeding the judging criteria can reassure you that the brand is growing and evolving - therefore providing fantastic opportunity for growth and success for its network of franchisees.

Standards based

As a standards-based organisation, the bfa sets high expectations of what constitutes a ‘good’ franchise.

Our goal is to motivate franchisors to not only meet those standards, but exceed them. Our awards programme plays a significant part in this, as our requirements for successful applicants encourages franchise brands not only to work towards being the best, they also encourage franchisors to look at what they’re already excelling at.

It’s easy to get caught up in the business and forget to look at what it’s doing well from an outside perspective. Brands benefit from promotion and PR as finalists and winners of the awards, while franchisees benefit from their own awards categories and increasingly motivated franchisors.

It would be understandable for you to feel like an outsider with regards to the awards if you’re not yet part of the UK franchise community. Rest assured, the awards are designed to benefit you as a prospect as well as the franchisors, their franchisees and the franchising community as a whole.