GoKawiil
Tech News
Brian Bailey took a Domino's delivery job in his 20s to pay off student loans and became a store manager within 58 days. He bought his first franchise in Carlsbad, New Mexico, and has since expanded his company, Team Bailey, into the largest Domino's franchise operator in the U.S. with 160 stores across five states after acquiring 45 additional locations in Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma in 2025.
Multiple restaurant chains are rolling out cheese-heavy items this fall, including Applebee's new O-M-Cheese-adilla Burger, Golden Chick's $1 queso, Freddy's Baconfest with cheese-topped tots, Denny's all-American-cheese burger lineup, Panera's Three-Cheese Lasagna Soup, and Qdoba's dip-focused 'Diptember' promotion featuring Queso Fundido.
A number of Domino's Pizza restaurants operated by an Ohio-based franchisee have suddenly shut down. The closures appear tied to the franchise operator's financial difficulties rather than a corporate decision by Domino's itself.
A Denny's franchisee that operated multiple restaurants across Minnesota and Wisconsin abruptly closed all of its locations earlier this month. The closures were confirmed by Fast Company, though the exact number of affected stores and reasons for the shutdown were not fully detailed.
Bill Lewis, 58, a former Wall Street broker laid off in 2013, invested his entire $180,000 401(k) into a Nestlé Toll House franchise, believing the established brand would guide him through unfamiliar territory as a first-time business owner. Despite strong initial sales growth, high mall operating costs made the store unprofitable, and after four years he was forced to shut it down. Lewis now works up to 75 hours a week driving for Uber and Lyft in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains to rebuild his finances.
Hotel developer Ian McClure has become the first outside operator in more than ten years to sign a fresh development agreement with Planet Fitness, rather than buying into the chain by acquiring an existing franchisee's gyms. McClure's firm, Gulf Coast Hotel Management, which runs extended-stay hotels and Wyndham properties across several states, secured three area deals to open over a dozen locations on Florida's Gulf Coast. Each gym costs between $1.3 million and $5.4 million to launch depending on financing.
Capcom says it will keep reactivating older IPs after Onimusha: Way of the Sword sold over a million copies on launch day, marking the first mainline Onimusha title since 2006. The publisher noted in a press release that alongside new major releases, it intends to revisit franchises that haven't seen new entries in years, pointing to efforts already underway with Okami and Mega Man.
Ken and Sarah Barlow opened a 16 Handles self-serve frozen yogurt franchise in Forest Acres, South Carolina in June 2025 after signing on with the brand in early 2024. The idea stemmed from their daughter wanting to customize her own frozen yogurt, and the couple noticed no such business existed in their town. Within six months of opening, the location generated $1 million in sales.
An Entrepreneur opinion piece argues that most franchise growth plans falter due to weak structure, misaligned leadership and inconsistent execution rather than bad ideas. The author, comparing franchise recruitment to precisely timing a V-8 engine, says franchisors often keep tweaking their candidate-sourcing process without ever achieving a clear sense of success. The piece urges leaders to replace guesswork with standardized, repeatable systems for evaluating franchisee quality.
An Entrepreneur contributor argues that franchise brands often struggle with recruiting new franchisees not because of weak marketing, but because senior leaders fail to stay engaged as 'Executive Sponsors' of the effort. The role involves clearing obstacles, allocating resources, managing risk, and communicating the purpose behind recruitment goals rather than simply delegating the task to a team.
Yum! Brands has finished divesting Pizza Hut, selling its non-China operations to private equity firm LongRange Capital for $1.5 billion after already selling Pizza Hut China to Yum! China Holdings for $1.2 billion. Yum! could earn up to $75 million more by 2030 if Pizza Hut meets performance benchmarks, while CEO Chris Turner said the move frees the company to focus on KFC, Taco Bell and Habit Burger & Grill.
Across decades of reboots, films and animated series, Peter Cullen has consistently returned as the voice of Optimus Prime, providing continuity to the Transformers franchise regardless of who else is involved in a given production. His presence has become a defining thread linking the many different creative visions the property has cycled through.