Your all-in-one franchise onboarding roadmap

CoverPanda's onboarding roadmap for getting your franchise setup and open.

Congratulations! You've made the leap and are starting a new franchise venture! Now that you’ve committed to this new venture, you want to get your business open and generating revenue as soon as possible. But there’s so many steps for you to take to get from receiving a “welcome email” from your franchisor → grand opening day. CoverPanda simplifies your store onboarding roadmap, so you can focus on building a successful business.

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In this document we will walkthrough each of the phases shown above:

Phase 1- Franchise Purchase Process

Starting your business the correct way is crucial and often overlooked. Begin these setup tasks even before you finalize your ADA purchase. As you finalize signing your ADA with your franchisor, CoverPanda helps you incorporate your business entity, and setup your business banking.

Franchise fees can be counted towards your required equity injection into the loan. Paying your franchise fees from your newly setup business bank account will save you hours of follow-ups from bank underwriters. Whereas paying your franchise fees out of a personal bank account creates muddy bank statements and paper trails to show business expenses that qualify as equity injections into your business.

Phase 1 action items:

Incorporate and register new business EIN: 1-2 weeks

Also recommended to register business for sales tax license

Apply and setup business bank and expense management accounts: 1-week

Fund business bank account with your franchise fees, before paying franchisor: 1-day

Phase 2- Intro to store planning & design

Timelines in the initial store onboarding process can get away from you and cause significant delays in getting to your grand opening day. Starting the loan application process immediately after signing will ensure you have the funds to build your location, even before having a signed lease. Starting to meet with real estate brokers and making offers on potential lease options immediately is recommended as well. A rule of thumb, it takes on average 30-days to finalize lease negotiations once you have made your initial offer. After obtaining a signed lease, there’s multiple aspects of your buildout process that can cause for additional delays. A franchisee that is timely in corresponding with various vendors involved in the buildout process, and avoids unnecessary delays, can expect the buildout→grand opening timeline to look similar to this:

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Architectural Plans: 6-8 weeks

Most cities take 4-8 weeks - some of this time involves their requests for revisions and actual revisions being made to your architect plans

After the Plan Review, the city may have several revisions/changes needing to be made to your plans (this is normal). Request the city provide you with an "official" review letter so your architect can make the appropriate changes. This may take an additional 1-2 weeks for your architect to update plans.