The Franchise Ops Playbook: 9 Levers High-Growth Brands Are Pulling in 2025

Chapter 1: Controlling Your Brand’s Public Perception at Scale

How Listings and Reviews Can Make or Break Your Reputation

In today’s always-on world, your brand is only as strong as its weakest online listing or most recent review. But for multi-location operators, maintaining consistent and accurate listings, while managing reviews across hundreds of platforms, is a time suck—unless it’s automated.

The Real Cost? Inaccurate hours, conflicting service menus, and unmanaged reviews can erode trust fast. Your customer doesn’t care who was responsible—they’ll just move on.

📊Benchmark Insight:

Businesses with inconsistent listings lose up to 73% of their potential local search visibility. 

Smart Operators Ask:

• Are listings and business info updated automatically across every platform?
• Do we get alerts for negative reviews or mentions?
• Are we monitoring competitor reviews to find patterns?

How Top Brands Solve It: They centralize listing and review management into a single system, with automated syncing across platforms like Google, Yelp, Facebook, and 100+ others. They monitor reputation metrics in real time—per location and brand-wide.

🔧 How MyTime Helps:

MyTime syncs your business info across Google, Yelp, Facebook, and 100+ directories. You get review alerts by location and competitive insights, all from one central platform.

Mini Audit:

• Do customers regularly complain about wrong hours or outdated info?
• Is your team manually logging into Yelp, Google, and others to reply?
• Can HQ see reputation trends per market?

Next Up: Let’s tackle how your marketing efforts scale—or stall—across locations.

Chapter 2: When Your Marketing Doesn’t Scale, Neither Does Growth

Why Most Franchise Marketing Strategies Break at 5+ Locations

Your brand has strong creative. But that’s not enough. At the multi-location level, the issue isn’t ideas—it’s execution. Without a centralized system that allows for localized campaigns, segmentation, and attribution, you’re left guessing what’s working and wasting budget.

The Real Cost? Uncoordinated marketing leads to inconsistent experiences, wasted spend, and campaigns that underperform.

📊Benchmark Insight:

Only 41% of marketers can effectively measure ROI through attribution. 

Smart Operators Ask:

• Can HQ run global campaigns while empowering local teams?
• Are promo codes trackable across every channel?
• Do we have clear attribution across email, SMS, app, and social?
• How do we run personalized marketing campaigns at scale?

How Top Brands Solve It: They use an integrated marketing system that unifies client data to create personalized campaigns, promo code tracking, flash sales, and performance analytics. They A/B test, track revenue generated, and scale campaigns that work across all channels.

🔧How MyTime Helps:

MyTime gives you one platform to run both national and location-specific marketing campaigns. You can segment audiences based on visit history, automate personalized outreach through email, SMS, and app, and track promo code performance and revenue attribution across every channel—all from one centralized dashboard.

Mini Audit:

• Can you view marketing ROI by campaign and location?
• Are you customizing outreach based on visit or purchase history?
• Are app, email, and SMS campaigns managed in one system?

Next Up: We dig into your booking experience—and why it may be silently costing you revenue.

Chapter 3: The Booking Blind Spot

Why Complex Booking Workflows Are Silently Killing Growth

Most operators assume their booking system “works.” But here’s what we see again and again:

• Staff manually piecing together multi-service visits
• Locations are overbooked on weekends and empty mid-week
• Missed revenue from services that aren’t suggested during booking
• Clunky customer booking experiences that frustrate clients

The Real Cost?

Lost revenue, frustrated clients, and staff constantly putting out fires.

📊 Benchmark Insight:

Real-time booking and dynamic service workflows can boost revenue by up to 20%.

Smart Operators Ask:

• Can clients book multiple services in one flow—like an IV treatment + add-ons?
• Can they book multiple guests or pets in one session?
• Can I suggest upsells automatically at the time of booking?

How Top Brands Solve It:

Franchise leaders are shifting to unified, omnichannel booking platforms—ones that:

• Sync online, in-app, and in-store bookings
• Allow multi-service, multi-location scheduling in one workflow
• Show real-time availability across staff and resources

🔧 How MyTime Helps:

MyTime allows clients to book multiple services, guests, or pets in a single, intuitive flow—online, in-app, or at the desk. Upsells are presented at booking, not after.

Mini Audit:

• Are you still taking bookings by phone or text?
• Do most clients rebook through your app or website?
• Can your platform handle complex bookings without staff involvement?

If you answered “no” more than once, you’re likely leaking revenue every day.

Next Step:

➡️ In Chapter 4, we’ll tackle scheduling and how to protect your labor margin without undercutting experience.

Chapter 4: Labor Cost Chaos

How Smarter Scheduling Protects Your Margins

Scheduling across multiple locations is a delicate balance of availability, demand, and labor laws. Manual scheduling or disconnected systems result in overstaffing, understaffing, and frustrated teams.

The Real Cost? Wasted labor spend, high turnover, and inconsistent customer experience.

📊 Benchmark Insight:

Scheduling inefficiencies cost companies 0.05% to 2.5% of annual payroll.

Smart Operators Ask:

• Are we using historical demand to forecast schedules?
• Can we sync staff availability with resource (room/equipment) usage?
• Can staff trade shifts or view schedules in-app?

How Top Brands Solve It: They use AI-driven scheduling tools that forecast labor needs based on service demand, auto-generate shifts, and sync staff availability with bookings. Managers approve, not build, the schedule.

🔧 How MyTime Helps:

MyTime uses booking data to forecast labor needs and generate optimal shift coverage. Staff can swap shifts, update availability, and check schedules—all in-app.

Mini Audit:

• Do managers spend hours each week building shifts manually?
• Are labor costs consistently over target?
• Are you tracking labor variance by location?

Next Up: Learn how to simplify transactions and sync financial reporting.

Chapter 5: Transactions That Power Real-Time Visibility

How a Unified POS and Accounting System Unlock Better Decisions

A sale is more than a swipe. It’s inventory, tax, reporting, and accounting data in motion. If your POS isn’t connected to your financial systems, you’re stuck reconciling spreadsheets and hoping it all lines up.

The Real Cost? Manual errors, delayed reporting, and poor visibility into cash flow and profitability.

📊 Benchmark Insight: Integrating POS and accounting systems can reduce reconciliation time by 67% . 

Smart Operators Ask:

• Are POS and accounting systems connected in real-time?
• Can I track revenue by service, location, and channel?
• Is tipping, refunding, and tax tracking automated?

How Top Brands Solve It: They implement POS systems that sync directly with accounting tools, track cash and credit transactions, reconcile gift card usage, and automate payout reports. Finance teams get daily clarity.

🔧 How MyTime Helps:

MyTime connects your POS, inventory, payments, tips, taxes, gift cards, and accounting into one fully integrated system. Every transaction—whether online, in-store, or in-app—is tracked in real time and rolled into financial reports. Cross-location redemptions for gift cards, memberships, and packages are automatically recognized and reconciled. Because all tools are built to work together—not stitched together—your payout reports, tax tracking, and revenue data stay accurate, in sync, and up to date. Say goodbye to manual exports and end-of-month surprises.

Mini Audit:

• Are you still exporting CSVs to reconcile revenue?
• Do you struggle with tip payout accuracy?
• Can you view transaction-level detail across every location?

Next Up: See how modern brands are owning the mobile experience with branded apps.

Chapter 6: Your Brand, In Their Pocket

Why Every Franchise Needs a Branded App

Clients want to interact with you on their terms—and that increasingly means mobile. Without a branded app, you lose mindshare, rebooking, and upsell opportunities.

The Real Cost? Lower lifetime value, fewer repeat visits, and no direct channel for offers or reminders.

📊 Benchmark Insight:

Branded apps drive 2x more repeat bookings and increase lifetime value by 33%. 

Smart Operators Ask:

• Can clients book, buy, and manage visits through our own branded app?
• Can we push location-specific offers via mobile?
• Can members view and redeem perks from the app?

How Top Brands Solve It: They launch fully branded mobile apps that connect bookings, memberships, referrals, notifications, and rebooking into one experience. The app becomes the digital front door of the business.

🔧 How MyTime Helps:

With MyTime’s branded guest app, clients can book and rebook appointments, manage their accounts, and receive location-specific offers—all within your fully branded experience. Clients can connect directly with staff through in-app messaging, view and redeem loyalty points, and access membership perks. The app syncs in real time with your POS, marketing, and client data—so every interaction feels personal, consistent, and on-brand, across every location.

Mini Audit:

• Do clients need to call to reschedule?
• Are you using third-party apps with limited control?
• Can you track in-app behavior to improve retention?

Next Up: Let’s talk inventory—and how to stop flying blind.

Want your brand in every customer’s pocket?

👉 See how franchise brands drive loyalty and rebooking with a branded app 

Chapter 7: Inventory That Works for You (Not the Other Way Around)

Why Real-Time Inventory Tracking Is Non-Negotiable

Managing back bar and retail stock across multiple locations is hard—but not having visibility is worse. Manual processes lead to stockouts, shrinkage, and lost sales.

The Real Cost? Revenue leakage, frustrated clients, and overstocked shelves draining cash.

📊Benchmark Insight:

Out-of-stocks cost U.S. retailers over $82 billion annually. Source

Smart Operators Ask:

• Can we track inventory globally and locally?
• Are usage and reorder points automated?
• Can we analyze trends by location?

How Top Brands Solve It: They track retail and back bar inventory in real-time, get low stock alerts, and auto-calculate reorder points based on usage. Local teams scan in receipts; HQ sees the full picture.

🔧 How MyTime Helps:

MyTime tracks both front-of-house (retail) and back bar (service) inventory in real time, automatically updating stock levels based on purchases and services performed. You can manage both global SKUs shared across all locations and local SKUs specific to individual stores. Low stock alerts, automated reorder points, and detailed usage reporting help prevent stockouts and over-ordering—while giving HQ full visibility across the entire operation.

Mini Audit:

• Are you doing monthly manual counts?
• Do staff enter inventory adjustments by hand?
• Are your top SKUs always in stock?

Next Up: Let’s make staffing and client management smoother and smarter.

Chapter 8: Managing People and Pets (or People and People)

How to Get Visibility Into Staff and Client Interactions Across Locations

The relationship between staff and clients drives your business. Without clear data, preferences, and visit history, you’re just guessing at how to keep them engaged.

The Real Cost? Inconsistent experiences, poor retention, and inefficiencies in staff planning.

📊Benchmark Insight:

80% of consumers are more likely to buy from brands that offer personalized experiences. 

Smart Operators Ask:

• Do we track client preferences and visit history?
• Can we assign clients to preferred staff?
• Can managers see staff performance across KPIs?

How Top Brands Solve It: They centralize client and staff records, automate notes and reminders (like pet immunizations or client birthdays), and manage performance through integrated dashboards.

🔧 How MyTime Helps:

MyTime stores and surfaces client profiles, visit history, service preferences, and pet-specific needs automatically—so every team member delivers a personalized experience without asking repeat questions. Managers and franchise owners get real-time visibility into staff performance, including rebooking rates, revenue per service, and productivity KPIs. Clients can also be matched to preferred staff members, and performance insights can be filtered by staff, location, or brand-wide to support smarter coaching, scheduling, and growth decisions.

Mini Audit:

• Do clients repeat preferences every time?
• Is staff productivity tracked by service and revenue?
• Are rebooking and notes automated?

Next Up: We end with the most important superpower of all: data.

Chapter 9: From Gut Feel to Global Visibility

Why Unified Data Is the Secret to Smarter Growth

Scaling franchises often rely on outdated dashboards, fragmented reports, and guesswork. The answer? One source of truth across the entire organization.

The Real Cost? Reactive decision-making, missed trends, and leadership flying blind.

📊 Benchmark Insight:

Brands with unified data strategies make decisions 25% faster and are 3x more likely to hit growth targets. 

Smart Operators Ask:

• Can I access real-time dashboards across all hubs?
• Do I track labor, bookings, inventory, and marketing in one place?
• Can I drill down to see what’s working per location?

How Top Brands Solve It: They unify data from every module into a single dashboard. From execs to location managers, everyone makes faster, smarter decisions with the same playbook.

🔧 How MyTime Helps:

MyTime unifies your operational data—from labor and revenue to bookings, marketing, inventory, and staff performance—into one centralized analytics hub. Real-time dashboards give corporate, regional, and location-level leaders instant access to KPIs, trends, and benchmarks. No more waiting on month-end reports or stitching together siloed systems. With location-level scorecards and drill-down capabilities, you can identify what’s working, fix what’s not, and make faster, smarter decisions that drive growth across the entire brand.

Mini Audit:

• Do you rely on end-of-month reports?
• Is data analysis outsourced or manual?
• Do you have location-level scorecards?

Final Step

Want help closing the gaps you uncovered?

Let’s walk through your results and show you how top brands are scaling faster and smarter with MyTime.