how hard is it to buy into a franchise business

Depends on the chain.

Some require you to work as a cashier and fry cook first. Bojangles is an example - there was an NFL player who worked at one during the summer because his plan for life after football is to own Bojangles franchises.

Other places might just let you write a check and take over a location.

I have a friend that bought a Quizno’s franchise. He worked about 80 hours a week and still lost pretty much everything. Sold his house, got divorced, and filed bankruptcy all in under 3 years.

Quizno’s screwed him hard. They would put out so many coupons he was losing money. Quzino’s was making more money on the increased sales #s upping their franchise fee & him having to buy all his product from the franchise.

Franchises are tough.

An average UPS Store does $1M+ in annual sales and half the franchise owners make less than $50K per year.

Costs can be all over the map depending on the industry. Franchise fees may only be the beginning. A royalty or percent of net sales is common. In the restaurant space being forced to buy all your supplies from the parent company is also common. Geographic exclusivity needs to be discussed up front.

At the end of the day; it often feels like the only person making money is the parent franchise company. Be sure to talk to persons with existing franchises before jumping in.

Given the amount of cash you have it’s going to be somewhat limiting. As a reference; most recognizable fast food chains start by requiring access to $1M liquid cash. For more lucrative ones like Chic Fil A that number quickly jumps to $2-3M. At which point you’d be forced to take on partners which has its own host of issues.

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And we was discussing jobs and what not but what if we took 150-200k and threw it at a popular franchise business...

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$150k maybe in 1998, today? You probably need closer to $1mil for most decent franchises.

Think about this, if you could start a franchise with $200k and hire a competent GM for $80k and make money then there wouldn't be many franchises available.

Starting a franchise blind takes a lot of hard work, a lot of luck, and a lot of money.

A large portion of the success from a franchise will depend on your labor, labor cost, and rent cost.

ETA: Moving to a new area you have no experience with and starting a NEW franchise to you seems like a really bad idea to me. It would be one thing to have experience with the franchise and then move to open a new one.

Most responses are discussing food places.
I used franchise gator and interviewed several.
Bought territory rights for home remodel franchise in Pensacola area and Gulf Shores/Fairhope. Have to pay back 10% of revenue to corporate. Thinking the way mortgages are, remodels will remain strong for foreseeable future. Plan to sell both locations within 10 yrs.

I’m putting in double your estimated costs though…

Here's a franchise FOMO true story:

In 2002, I approached Graves about franchising (through me) Cane's to the Northeast. I had been bringing droves of people down for LSU games and every single person would start looking forward to the trips just because of the damned Cane's! Believe it or not, it actually was considered sort of an open question whether or not yankees would eat the stuff.

This was before they had a huge number of stores and they didn't even have one franchise yet. He actually said yes - BUT...he wanted me to move to BR and work in stores for 9 months. He wanted me to start on the fry line and work every position so I knew it inside and out.

Well, I was young, and just engaged and living 1500 miles away and I just wasn't willing to do it.

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Me and the wife are talking about moving to a different state, some place slower paced. And we was discussing jobs and what not but what if we took 150-200k and threw it at a popular franchise business...

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Buying a job and an expensive one at that. I have respect for folks who have the balls to do something like this. I'm not that guy though.