If you want to find a great opportunity in franchising, it’s worth asking two questions: What categories are booming (or about to boom)? And why?
We can certainly answer the first one. At the end of each year, Entrepreneur looks across the franchising space and the world at large, and analyzes industry trends and year-over-year unit growth. Then we produce a list of franchise categories that we expect to thrive next year. You can see that full list of predictions, along with the brands inside each category, starting on page 122.
But why are these categories so hot? For that, we must turn to some industry insiders.
“When you look at the category level, it is always a reflection of larger economic factors that are driving consumer behavior,” says Edith Wiseman, president of FRANdata. “All of these can be tied back to the overall change in how consumers are viewing their lives, and how they want to spend their time and treat themselves.”
Sometimes, the answers are obvious. If you look at our list of predictions, you’ll see a mixture of old and newly thriving categories. Some of them, like pets, have been hot for years, and are clearly tied to the way COVID shifted people’s behaviors. (Remember all those pandemic puppies?) But there are also newly growing categories, which either weren’t surging before or are just beginning to experience rising levels of competition.
In particular,
