Howard County Franchises Among Best In U.S.: Entrepreneur

HOWARD COUNTY, MD — The business and management magazine Entrepreneur has released its 41st annual rankings of the top 500 franchises in North America.

Dunkin’ was ranked No.1 on the list, with Taco Bell and McDonald’s rounding out the top three.

Howard County serves as home to the headquarters of two of the best franchises in North America.

One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning: 143

One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning franchisees offer heating and cooling repairs, replacements, maintenance, indoor air quality work and duct work. Protection plans are offered through the Home Comfort Collection.

The Cleaning Authority: 214

The Cleaning Authority started in the late 1970s in the Baltimore-Washington metro area. In 1989, Steve Robinson and Tim Evankovich bought the company and in 1996 they began franchising it. Cleaning Authority franchisees offer environmentally friendly home cleaning services, using Green Seal Certified cleaning products, HEPA vacuums and microfiber dusting clothes.

Understanding what a franchise is

In a business format, a franchiser provides a franchisee its trade name, products, services and generally an entire operating system for the business. In most cases, the franchisee pays a royalty and an initial fee for the rights to do business under the franchiser’s name.

A possibly easier way to think about it is that a franchise is a company that allows individual people not associated with the organization to open and manage a location under the company’s name and backing.

You can read more about the process of franchising on franchise.org.

Methodology

To be considered for Entrepreneur’s rankings, franchises submitted a detailed application covering basic information about the company. Additionally, to be eligible, a franchiser must be seeking new franchisees in the United States or Canada and must have had a minimum of 10 units open and operating as of July 31.

The eligible franchisers were then scored based on more than 150 data points, and those with the highest cumulative marks became part of the Franchise 500.

Here are the top 10 franchises in the United States in 2020, according to Entrepreneur:

1. Dunkin’
2. Taco Bell
3. McDonald’s
4. Sonic Drive-In
5. The UPS Store
6. Ace Hardware
7. Planet Fitness
8. Jersey Mike’s Subs
9. Culver’s
10. Pizza Hut LLC

The full list of franchises on the 2020 list is available on Entrepreneur.