America's Eight Greatest Franchise Pioneers
From Benjamin Franklin to Ray Kroc
European governments had given special franchise privileges to companies to act in their behalf for centuries, such as the running of the Jamestown colony in Virginia. But as early as Benjamin Franklin's print shops of the 1730s, there have been American entrepreneurs who innovated a franchise model to help spread a way of doing business. These franchises have been as diverse as print shops (the first franchise) to beauty parlors (Martha Harper). These individuals pioneered a blueprint for the modern business format franchise in which an entire business model is distilled to a franchise owner.
And the eight greatest business-format franchise pioneers are...
- Benjamin Franklin
- Isaac Singer
- Fred Harvey
- Martha Harper
- Louis Liggett
- Roy Allen
- Howard Johnson
- Ray Kroc
Click on the slideshow navigation button above to see what these eight great franchise pioneers did.
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