The Rise Of Female Franchises
Entrepreneur|March 2018

Women are buying franchises at a rate far faster than men. Now the industry is asking itself: Why? And how can we keep it going?

Kris Frieswick
The Rise Of Female Franchises

Robin Mainer was a longtime commissioned salesperson for an insurance company. But by the time she turned 51, those commissions had dried up. She needed to figure out what, as she says, she wanted to do when she grew up. Mainer and her friend and coworker Kimera Shepler decided to think hard on it and come back with a plan.

“I went home and prayed about it,” Mainer says. “I said, I want a clear direction. I’ll do whatever you want, but I need a direction.”

The next day, she went to get her oil changed—not expecting it to be part of that new direction. And for a while, it wasn’t. The man who checked her in took her keys and told her to sit down next to two other women in the waiting area. As they waited, a male customer came in, greeted the same man at the front desk, and told him he was in a big hurry.

“The employee asked the gentleman, ‘What kind of oil do you want? Do you need wiper blades?’ All this other stuff,” Mainer recalls. “I asked the other ladies, ‘Did he ask you those questions?’ They said, ‘He said the same thing to us that he said to you.’”

Mainer confronted the man. “You asked that male customer all those questions, and you didn’t ask us any,” she said.

The man replied, “I didn’t want to have to explain it all to you.”

There was an audible gasp from the women in the waiting area. “Oh, no, he didn’t,” said one. Then they all pounced on the hapless employee.

This story is from the March 2018 edition of Entrepreneur.

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This story is from the March 2018 edition of Entrepreneur.

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