Is 1851 Franchise A Credible Source of Franchise Information? (2024)

Introduction

Patrick Findaro here, a co-founder at Vetted Biz. At Vetted Biz, we’re much more focused on helping prospective franchise buyers, and investors. We’re not serving franchise wars with lead gen or advertising for franchisors. That being said, most of the franchise information out there is being generated by franchisors to sell franchises. There are a lot of concepts that we’ve already done videos on, like Franchise Gator, and Biz Buy Sell that whose primary source of income is from the franchisor.

This other business that we’re going to review today, 1851 Franchise, is kind of similar in that approach, but they have pretty good editorial and coverage on at least their clients that are franchises.

1851 Franchise: Business Review

1851 Franchise was created in 2012 as a platform to share news about the franchise industry. Now, they claim to have a monthly readership of more than 300,000 franchisors-franchisees prospects. They claim to have the best news on franchises to buy.

I would argue that it’s a bit selective in terms of the franchise that they report on. It seems most of the time they’re current clients that engaged for 1851franchise.com to provide content marketing or PR for. Or prospective clients that they’re having coverage for.

The Efforts of 1851 Franchise

1851 Franchise strives to be the top content marketing franchise development solution for franchisors. They have featured SEO-rich, long-form featured stories about franchisees and executives. And it’s all targeting prospective franchisees. They say that because the content is hosted on third-party industry publications, the brands earn instant credibility.

It’s definitely disingenuous. They don’t have the best interest of the franchise buyer in mind because they’re largely reporting on their clients. And it’s going to be a positive spin 99% of the time if you’re reporting on clients that are paying your bill.

It’s assuming that the consumer treats platforms the same and are not able to distinguish between sponsored and advertisements. What content’s potentially from an actual client 1851. The issue is they make it kind of tough to tell what is being produced. Because the client is paying for it and what their journalists are reporting on. And they do have some great, newsworthy content on different franchise brands. As well as select cases, like, the franchise closure document and going through particular items, and their writers are talented.

Content about a selection of franchisees

1851, at times, will interview industry experts, whether it’s franchise attorneys, franchise consultants, brokers, or former executives of very large franchise brands. They do have some good content.

But if you’re a franchise buyer or investor, just be mindful that they are getting paid principally by the franchisor to recruit prospective franchisees. You got to be on the alert with the information that you’re taking in because they’re trying to get franchisees for their paying franchisor clients.

I took a look at the top franchise influencers for 2022, a list that they comprised with SeoSamba. And I thought a lot of the lists made sense. I saw prominent franchise founders, presidents. All different types of franchise suppliers on the list that made a lot of sense. But I can’t take the list seriously when the owner and creator of the list, Nick Powills, lists himself as number one on the list of franchise influencers.

A Not Very Credible List of Influencial Brands

I’m sure it created a nice buzz with their clients and prospective clients that there was this long list of franchise influencers. But it kind of brings down the credibility a bit where it’s not clear how the list was created. And then the curator of the list throws himself on as the number one influencer in the franchise space.

He even ranked himself significantly higher than Gullermo Perales, who has over 1,000 franchise locations and employs 22,000 people across Sun Holding’s stores, including Taco Bueno, Burger King, Popeyes, Arby’s, IHOP, Cicis pizza, as well as a few other brands. I just thought that was kind of funny. You have the third-largest franchisee in the U.S. and the top Hispanic franchisee in the country listed at around 90, and you have many people ahead of Gullermo, including the owner of 1851.

And it was funny, sprinkled on the list, it was mostly U.S. executives or franchise executives operating in the U.S., but you did have some that were in the UK, and especially from France, where they had the chief marketing officer of Domino’s Pizza France, Nicolas Dégéraud, on the list, as well as a few other prominent French executives in the franchising space.

Conclusion

I didn’t know if those were prospects of 1851 or they were actual clients of 1851. And again, you have some top influencers on the list like Peter Cancro, who’s the CEO of Jersey Mike’s, and has built that system up. But you kind of devalue the list where you sprinkle in some of these influencers that clearly seem like high-paying clients, or that, work at the company that’s producing the list.

1851 Franchise, they have all the potential to be a top news source. If not the best news source with their writers. However, they’re only reporting on a small spectrum of franchise opportunities. That are largely current clients or potential clients of 1851 Franchise. Until they expand the number of franchise brands that they’re covering, as well as clean up a bit their top 175 franchise influencers, it’s not the most credible source for franchise information right now in 2022.