When people think of "a franchise," it's easy to picture the familiar names we're all used to seeing in strip malls, perhaps over saturating a geographic market. Here is how we make sure each partner's area is protected territory:
Franchise agreements outline a specific territory making owners legally bound to staying in their own territory.
Territories are very large with boundaries typically marked by county for the greatest chance of success. It wouldn't make sense for a partner to try to "steal" a family outside of their area because that family wouldn't usually be a drivable distance.
Our website and client intake infrastructure routes potential families to the correct area by zip code. Here’s an example of how it works in New Jersey; users have no choice but to be routed to the correct office.
Our technical infrastructure allows us see where every inquiry is coming from and where it’s going online so it would be very obvious if families were in the wrong territory.
All of this said, we have found, like many in the service industry, that having neighboring franchisees is actually a benefit to all the partners and staff. In the Washington DC area for example, we have sister offices in the District, Bethesda, MD and Loudoun County, VA. Some parts of the different territories are within driving distance for team members, allowing the offices to borrow staff from each other, sometimes give each other cases when a location is fully booked. Elder care franchises note this benefit as well.
Lastly, “stealing” cases and petty things like this are not something we worry about at Let Mommy Sleep. In addition to the IT tools that allow us to track each case, after so many years working collaboratively with people who only have high integrity, each owner has showed the others over and over that they will do whatever they can to help the others succeed.