Choosing the Right Business Structure to Support Restaurant and Franchise Growth

At a glance:

• The main takeaway: Your business structure should align with your current operations and future goals, including growth, investment, or a sale. Flexibility is key as your goals evolve.
• Impact on your business: Restaurant owners and franchisees/franchisors often require different structuring strategies. No solution is one-size-fits-all.
• Next steps: Aprio’s Restaurant, Franchise, and Hospitality team works collaboratively with clients to design structures that support their scalability, compliance, and long-term market value.

When launching or scaling your restaurant or franchise operation, one of the most important decisions you can make is choosing the right business structure. It may seem like a simple, straightforward decision that enables you to meet compliance requirements — but it means so much more than that. The right structure can drive strategic growth, minimize tax liability, attract investors, and prepare you for a successful exit.

At Aprio, we work with restaurant and franchise clients at every stage of their business journey, offering multidisciplinary guidance that helps operators align structure with their long-term vision. Whether you’re a fast-casual startup, a legacy brand, or building out a franchise concept, here’s what you should consider when it comes to entity structuring.

Align your structure with your goals (even as they change)

Many restaurant and franchise owners think about business structure through one lens: tax and compliance. But the reality is that your business structure affects every aspect of your operation — including your capital-raising efforts, your operations, your financial reporting process, and even down to how you sell or scale.

When it comes to your business’s growth trajectory, there are typically two key stages where structural strategy matters most:

• Startup: During the early stages of your business, when you’re launching or expanding, you’ll need to choose the structure that allows you to properly fund the business and manage risk.
• Exit: Your structure equally matters when you’re preparing to sell, take on investors, or transition ownership.

At the same time, remember that your business goals aren’t static; life happens, opportunities arise, and goals evolve over time. Your business structure must be flexible enough to support your changing needs. By proactively planning for these pivots and seeking proper infrastructure consulting, you can ensure that your structure fuels your growth instead of inhibiting it.

Structuring for your role

Business structural needs may vary based on whether you own a franchise location or a standalone restaurant brand. For instance, a franchisee operating a few quick-service restaurants (QSRs) may benefit from a relatively simple structure; conversely, a multi-restaurant operator that doesn’t fall under a legacy brand may deal with intellectual property (IP) concerns, multi-entity audits, or a long-term expansion strategy that spans states or even countries.

Furthermore, if you plan to pursue goals that extend outside the bounds of restaurants or franchising, then your structure should be designed to keep assets separate. For instance, at Aprio we often help our clients isolate their restaurant or franchise business to ensure that their audit and compliance requirements are contained to just that entity. By doing this, we can help clients protect their other operations from unnecessary scrutiny or cost.

Sometimes, structural decisions are more influenced by future strategy, which brings forth a new list of questions to consider:

• Do you want to retain your locations while selling the IP?
• Are you holding onto your brand while exiting brick-and-mortar operations?
• Are you seeking outside investors, and if so, when?

Each of these paths requires a different approach to structuring, as well as the help of a qualified professional team with industry-specific experience in restaurants, franchises, and hospitality businesses.

One-size-fits-all isn’t the answer

Owners who look at business structuring from one perspective often encounter roadblocks over the long term. Keep in mind that the business structure that worked for your friend or colleague may not work for you. For instance, more tax-efficient structures may be more complex for audit compliance, whereas more operations-friendly structures may hinder deal readiness.

This is where the help of an independent, industry-specific consultant can be invaluable. At Aprio, we bring in tax, audit, legal, and transaction advisory professionals to evaluate our clients’ business structures from every angle. From there, we build a unified strategy that supports our clients’ evolving needs. Not only does this create a better, smoother experience for our clients, but it also provides them with peace of mind in knowing that their structure was chosen by a team that has their best interests, needs, and unique goals in mind.

The bottom line

Whether you’re just launching your restaurant concept, expanding regionally, or preparing for an acquisition, your business structure is foundational. The right structure will protect your assets, streamline operations, and enable smart growth.

If you’re looking for a professional team that can help guide you in the appropriate direction, look no further than Aprio’s Restaurant, Franchise, and Hospitality advisors. Our seasoned team of professionals understands the full lifecycle of modern restaurants and franchises and is uniquely positioned to help your business go further, faster.

Schedule a consultation with our team today.

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