Franchisee Pestilence

Ours is a popular chain of Restaurants. Hence it’s no surprise that we receive innumerous Franchisee enquiry calls. The problem is that the owners, for reasons best known to them, just aren’t interested.

This may be because they don’t want to dilute quality (or equity), or perhaps they worry it’ll be a logistical nightmare (unless they decentralise the prep kitchen- which in turn may dilute quality, Catch-22) or perhaps simply because they just aren’t greedy or ambitious enough.

I tried explaining to the callers that the owners weren’t interested but in Delhi, of all places, nobody likes to takes no for an answer, at least not anybody with money (Remember Jessica Lal?).

Initially (after unsuccessfully trying to fob them off) I’d just take down the details of the callers, promising that the owners will get back to them (we didn’t pass on the owners' number to the callers, citing company policy, as we didn’t want him inundated with calls).

Next, I started giving out the company & the owner’s Mail ID but pretty soon people started complaining that no one reverted.

With time the Franchisee calls got more virulent, like a virus that mutates into more dangerous variations. My earlier replies failed against the persistence of the callers, like earlier drugs fail against new strains of influenza.

Pretty soon, I guess, I’ll just have to pretend to be the owner.