Top Franchise Trends for 2026 (Don't Buy a Franchise Until You Watch This) | The Franchise King®

Hello everyone. I am the franchise king, Joel Labava. In today's video, I'm going to talk about the top trends in franchising for 2026. I just published an article um naming the top 10 trends. I'm going to go over a couple of them here and then I'll leave the link below this so you can read the entire article. It's pretty interesting and there are some really interesting trends that are going to be taking place this year. The first one, let's just get it out of the way. AI. AI is affecting franchising right now. I'm not talking just about the content that's being published, but I'm talking about internal obser uh internal uh operations um on the franchisee and franchiseor level. um things like customer retention, some of the things that can be automated now, uh monthly revenue reports, monthly revenue projections, all sorts of really interesting things. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Read the article for more specific information and to see who the players are right now in AI and franchising. Another one that's really, really important, equity firms, private equity firms that are buying into franchise companies. Uh they're buying them, they're taking them over, and the question remains, who's going to benefit besides the CEO, the person that founded the franchise company who gets a nice big check. How are the franchises going to benefit? and will they benefit with the power of more money being pumped in the system. Another trend, this one is being um uh talked about a lot and it's also starting to uh dominate some of the sectors of franchising and that is semi-absentee franchise ownership. Here's the thing. While on paper it sounds really good. Hey, if I can keep my job and also buy a franchise, start it and get going for a few years so I can retire with a business in my pocket, that would be great. The question is, are some of these newer semi-absentee franchise opportunities really semiappsente? I talk about it in the article and one tip I'm going to give you if you're looking at a franchise opportunity that is advertising itself as semiaabs, you need to really talk to franchises that are in the system to see if it really is truly semi-absentee or if it just kind of sounds good. And the final thing I want to talk about um home services specifically uh some of the trades now um like plumbing, electricity, uh electricians, uh you know, are there going to be enough people that are willing to be trained for these jobs who can work for you as a franchisee? It's still kind of up in the air. Personally, I wish more high school graduates and maybe people that have tried college for a couple years really take a serious look at skilled trades because they're really needed and the pay is really, really good. So, I encourage you to click the link below this video and check out the top 10 trends for 2026 and how they're going to impact the franchise industry. If you're looking for a franchise, I think you're going to really find this to be valuable. If you're a franchiseor, make sure you're involved in these trends because they're really going to be important moving forward. Thanks for watching this video. I'm the franchise king, Joel Labava.