29 Ohio Franchises Among Best In North America: Entrepreneur

CLEVLEAND — The business and management magazine Entrepreneur has released its 41st annual rankings of the top 500 franchises in North America. Nearly 30 Ohio companies made the cut.

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

Ohio is home to the headquarters of 29 of the best franchises in North America. The top-ranked franchises in the Buckeye State are:

• Matco Tools, Stow (No. 32 nationally)
  • Here's what Entrepreneur had to say about Ohio's highest-ranked franchise: "Since 1979, Matco Tools, a subsidiary of Fortive Corp., has been manufacturing, distributing, and servicing automotive equipment, tools, and toolboxes. Today the company's line of products includes over 25,000 different items. Franchisees bring these products to their customers in trucks, with locations in all 50 states, as well as Puerto Rico and Canada."
• CPR Cell Phone Repair, Independence (48)
• Pearle Vision, Mason (58)
• Red Roof, Columbus (66)

Here are some other notable franchises with headquarters in Ohio: Marco's Pizza (No. 83), Stanley Steemer Carpet Cleaner (No. 93), Petland (No. 118), Charley's Philly Steaks (No. 126), Donato's (No. 181) and Penn State East Coast Subs (No. 271).

To see the full list of franchises from our state, please visit Entrepreneur.com.

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.