The wrong growth model can make a good restaurant expansion plan unworkable before the first site is signed
This piece was originally shared on LinkedIn in response to recurring conversations with founders and leadership teams around this topic.
I’m publishing it here as part of an ongoing body of thinking around restaurant strategy, market entry, and operational decision-making.
Franchise, licence, management agreement, joint venture or own it directly. Which model do you go for?
Too often, that question gets answered too late.
When a location has been chosen and conversations started, the deal structure is decided from a narrower set of options.
The model choice should come much sooner.
In simple terms, it usually comes down to two questions:
How much control do you want to keep? And how much capital are you prepared to put in?
At one end, you have direct ownership. Full control, full capital exposure and the slowest path to scale.
Joint ventures share both capital and risk, usually with a partner who brings market or functional expertise.
Management agreements let you operate the brand using someone else’s capital or asset, often with a hotel, landlord, investor or property group as the owner.
Franchise and licence models sit further along the scale. Lower capital requirements, faster rollout but you're relying on partners to deliver and protect your standards.
Brand control is a sliding scale, as is what it costs you.
It is a crucial choice that needs to be clearly aligned within your growth strategy. The earlier on you decide on the model, the cleaner the decisions that follow.
It’s a conversation I’m having a lot at the moment. So over the next few weeks, I'll break down each one, including what it costs and where the decisions tend to go wrong.
First up: direct ownership. The model with the most control, and why it may still be worth considering even if your long-term plan is to scale through outside capital.
Since first sharing this, I’ve seen the same issue surface repeatedly — particularly with businesses entering new markets or scaling too quickly. The underlying challenge is rarely strategy itself, but how early decisions constrain execution later.
Andrew Jobes is the founder of Jobes & Co., a Dubai-based advisory working with restaurant and hospitality businesses across the Middle East and international markets.