One local owner says hire an attorney and an accountant before you take the plunge
Sharon and Robert Wyne split parenthood with split shifts after they opened Hagers-town’s first 7-Eleven franchise on Dual Highway in 1968.
Nearly 40 years later, the Wynes – now in a different Dual Highway location – continue taking turns tending the franchise they bought as an enterprising young couple.
“We had a lot of high hopes as young people,” Sharon Wyne, 62, said in a recent phone interview. “Some years have been good. Some years have not. Some years have been disastrous.”
Whether it’s young adults looking for a business opportunity or older adults looking for ways to spend their retirement, the attraction to franchised small businesses has increased across the United States in recent years, said Terry Hill, vice president of communications for the International Franchise Association.
Since there’s no such thing as a franchisee license, figuring out how many franchises are locally operated is a difficult task, said Cassandra Latimer, deputy director of the Washington County Economic Development Commission.
“There’s not a franchisee-specific license that companies would have to have to do business in Washington County,” Latimer said.
Hill agreed that the numbers are hard to pin down since there are so many different layers of ownership.
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