Successful Franchisees - Chain Lightning

Hispanic Business:

2 years ago, Hector Heras began selling franchises for his family’s Mexican-restaurant chain.

‘We sold our first franchise in April 2003, and now we have 37 store commitments to open in different markets in Texas and Denver and Arizona,” says Mr. Heras, whose El Taco Tote began in Mexico and expanded to El Paso, Texas, 9 years ago.

Gina Martinez (photo), founder of a 2-year-old cooking school for kids in Morristown, New Jersey, also is among those who have turned to franchising their own businesses. ‘I knew that the concept was innovative and that the timing was right, with so many kids in this country fighting obesity,’ says the 39-year-old Cuban-American founder of Viva the Chef.

Turning down an offer from Cendant Corp. to sell the concept, Ms. Martinez says she instead moved to franchise it herself, charging an initial franchise fee of $45,000. She received more than 2,000 applications and already has sold 27 Viva the Chef franchises.

Mr. Heras and Ms. Martinez are among what experts say is a steadily growing number of Hispanics building franchise businesses – both as franchisors and franchisees – across the United States. While statistics are elusive (most of the country’s 2,200 franchisors don’t track their franchisees by race or ethnicity) experts say Hispanics increasingly are participating in this thriving business sector, which includes 760,000 franchise owners, generates an estimated yearly revenue of $1.5 trillion, and accounts for almost 10 million jobs.

‘[The franchise industry is] entering a new phase where Hispanics’ success in running franchises has become a mainstream thing,’ says Sonya Brathwaite, director of diversity and U.S. emerging markets for the International Franchise Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group. ‘Now, more Hispanics also are coming in at the franchisor level where they’re franchising their own concepts successfully.’

Several Hispanic market leaders already are familiar names in franchising. Linda Alvarado of Alvarado Construction also runs Palo Alto Inc., a multi-unit Taco Bell and Pizza Hut franchise company. Lopez Foods, number 11 on the 2004 Hispanic Business 500®, is led by John Lopez, a former McDonald’s multi-unit franchisee who now is a key vendor to the McDonald’s franchise system. Cuban-born Al Cabrera operates 218 Burger King restaurants across the South and Midwest. And Ralph Alvarez, who began his career as an executive at Burger King and Wendy’s, is president of McDonald’s North America, responsible for over 15,000 restaurants across the US and Canada.

And experts say more can be expected…