FGP has perfected our own proprietary Site Search & Selection System to increase visibility and annual revenue. We build a team of specialists around each Franchisee who are highly trained within a specific skill of expertise. We take great pride in providing our Franchisees with the most comprehensive strategy combined with a results-oriented attitude to execute our protocols consistently on a daily basis:

Location Search: Demographics and Traffic Counts–Working within the territory granted to our Franchisee, our Site Selection Expert will develop up to three natural trade areas. Our Site Package includes a viewing of all property types (including specialty) with a list of tenants in the building, actual tenant lease information (when available) and videos and pictures for viewing the entire property from the exterior and, in some cases, the interior of the vacant units.

We will build a drive-by video so you can easily categorize into a Top 10-15 list. We can also customize one, three, and five-mile demographic reports to study population, income, ethnicity and subspecialty of consumer behavior specific to your customer profile. We maintain traffic counts, intersection volume and aerial retail maps to position the final location within the epicenter of both commerce and the community.

Property Types:

National Location Database – The commercial real estate industry has been revolutionized by new advancements of commercial location software and technology. In the past, Franchisees and brokers would drive around looking for spaces on basic search browsers such as LoopNet (basic and premium search). Our powerful database gives us access to 100% of all local landlord property ownership within each zip code in the United States.

Our property database provides search filtering capabilities by any parameter, including zip code, street, intersection, city, corridor, radius, county, etc. Our database gives us the same access that every city zoning and planning department has in the US when new shopping center developments are approved in “ground up” and ready-to-build for retail, office, medical, free standing, mixed use, etc.

Local Commercial Firms – There is a minimum of five national real estate firms in every market with up to 20 agents per office. We have developed a system to communicate with each agent, privately, within 24 hours. We have experienced local agents not readily willing to offer additional vacancies within their office that would be available to our franchisee.

We do not retain local brokers (with rare exceptions) to provide any services to our Franchisee.  This hit and miss approach is the root cause of why Franchisees seldom achieve location and economic goals in an expedited manner.

The local broker system is designed to encourage agents to show their company’s listed properties and work politically to place their own listings and serve the financial interests of their landlord. This conflict of interest causes franchisees to pay current market rental rates and landlord capital improvements. Additionally, build-out and free rent periods, along with tenant improvement dollars, are usually 50% less than what a Franchisee deserves. It is common that even a local broker will not introduce a vacancy within their own office because they are not assigned to that vacancy listing that their co-worker retains.

We believe that utilizing 100 brokers in a market and removing all bias and politics is a method of discovering locations that one local broker most likely would not identify. This is the extra effort our team will invest in to protect our proven track record of results.

Franchisee “Feet in the Street” – Our Franchisee has invested life savings and has been introduced to the franchisor location criteria. Their understanding of the local market, including where competitors are located, give them the natural incentive to be our most powerful agent in the local market.

Our franchisees make a commitment to drive the market daily and weekly to shortlist the properties down to our Top 10-15 properties presented on behalf of our team. We coach our clients on how to identify vacancies new to the market before they are listed in any database. An empowered Franchisee will not miss any opportunities with an enthusiastic daily commitment to drive the market. Local brokers are too busy working on many other assignments and do not have the same incentive to drive the market on a daily basis. Our Franchisees must be the first priority, not the last.

Advanced Site Search Program – We have extensive and centralized points of contact with the top national real estate firms: CBRE, Collier’s International, NAI Capital, Cushman & Wakefield, Weingarten, Westfield, Brixmor, Simon, GGP and Kimco, who currently owns 500 shopping centers throughout the United States. We have one contact which offers leverage to our Market Site Search and Lease 
Negotiating process.

Our database will give us access to local landlord building ownership of all commercial brokers. We can contact 100 different shopping center landlords and agents by e-mail and telephone to uncover pocket listings, relocations, ground-up projects, quiet turnover, business closings, lease explorations and businesses for sale. We have the ability to pull up every local commercial landlord and real estate firm and directly communicate with them, requesting all of their property listings.

Daily Electronic “Vacancy Alerts” – At midnight, our database will provide us all new commercial vacancies that became available during the last 24 hours. We have access to all new “ground-up properties” that have been approved by city planning and zoning departments and may be available in photo renderings and possible pre-lease opportunities.

This vacancy alert allows us to contact landlords to be the first inquiry on the space for our client. Commercial real estate turns over on a daily basis and throughout our search, very often we identify new locations that may be higher quality and immediately ready for lease.

NEXT – Lease Negotiation