Deepening Relationships with Restaurant Franchise Owners

Despite being the financier of choice for restaurant franchise owner/operators, we struggled to add on to our relationships with useful financial services.

Becoming the primary finacial institution for owner/operators was important because of the sustained growth of these businesses: a 30 year relationship with a franchisee and their growing portfolio of restaurants meant major opportunity to expand our services.

Marketing and sales defined 3 key areas to support early to mid-stage owner/operators: as employers, community members, and stewards of their personal wealth.

But the team needed insight into how to support owner/operators in these ways, and there was a hunger to innovate: stakeholders wanted new ways to engage owner/operators.

As a researcher outside of our sales team I was asked to dive deeper into owner/operator goals to get more transparency into their mindsets. But because that sales relationship provided so much detail about their goals, I redefined our learning goal: discover how they think about those relationships with financial institutions so that we can identify better ways to connect with them.

I moderated in depth, 1 on 1 interviews with 8 owner-operators. After learning where they had loans, deposits, credit cards, and other services I asked the foundational question of the interview:

Take me through your thinking when you chose [BANK] for [BANK SERVICE]

The stories they told become the drivers of the conversation. I gave them the space to share their decision making, prompting them intermittently to explain their thought processes, emotions, and principles.

This sent clear signals that the conversation was about them sharing with me, and also yielded insights we had yet to grasp in our larger relationships with them.

I defined 3 key phases of the ownership lifecycle:

1. Purchase a restaurant


2. Run a restaurant


3. Sell a restaurant

Within each phase I specified key actions and sub-actions, e.g., Evaluate my business, and Pay for Services.Identifying needs and the parent actions and phases provided context

Framing how we should show up as when should we show up helped the team visualize the opportunities, and sharing these insights as verbs in the first person made them easy to consume.

I presented these in a journey map, asking the team to help me understand what needs we already support and where we may have gaps so we could all realize the opportunties.

With these areas of opportunity, stakeholders could tell the parent corporation where and when our services could have the biggest impact and why. For the first time we could make our case as more than a lender.