Families function best when parents give their children roots and wings. It is no different for a parent company in franchising. A successful multi-brand parent company offers both the stability (roots) a brand needs to grow with a solid foundation and the resources and room to scale (wings), allowing it to gain traction and thrive. Nowhere is this more evident than in home services, where consumer demand is strong, but competition is fierce.
That’s where a parent company structure can transform the landscape. By providing shared services and centralized expertise, a parent company offers multiple service brands the infrastructure they need to grow stronger, faster, and more sustainably. This model also creates value that extends beyond individual franchisees to the entire brand family.
Stability and Strategic Support
One of the most immediate benefits a parent company brings is stability. For franchisees, investing in a new brand backed by an established parent provides reassurance that they are not navigating uncharted waters alone. For the brands themselves, it means access to a proven playbook for scaling responsibly.
I’ve seen firsthand how this plays out. In the case of our emerging franchise brand, Wonderly Lights, the brand shifted from being a niche, holiday-only lighting business to offering year-round outdoor lighting, including permanent LED light, landscape and architectural design installation services. That kind of pivot could have overwhelmed a young company, but with parent company support, the transition was not only possible, it was swift and successful. Marketing collateral, digital campaigns, photography, and training resources were updated in record time. The brand was able to meet new market demands without losing momentum in the holiday light vertical.
Marketing Power That Scales
Marketing is one of the most powerful ways a parent company can add value. While each brand typically has its own marketing manager who understands the nuances of their specific business, those individuals have access to centralized teams with deep expertise.
Take digital marketing, for example. On its own, an emerging brand might not have the data, creative resources, or analytical capabilities to launch a sophisticated campaign. Within a parent company structure, those resources already exist. Specialists in digital strategy, design, and analytics can step in, creating campaigns that feel brand specific while benefiting from the scale and precision of a larger organization.
The result is not just better campaigns but faster execution. A single brand doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel; it taps into shared knowledge that has been refined across multiple service businesses.
Data and Analytics Advantage
Numbers tell the story of a franchise system’s health, but they only matter if they’re actionable. Many young or smaller brands struggle with disparate systems –one for customer relationship management, another for scheduling, and another for marketing automation. Consolidating that information and making sense of it can be daunting.
A parent company can bridge that gap by investing in analytics teams and tools that individual brands would be hard-pressed to afford on their own. At Buzz Franchise Brands, we’ve built reporting systems that pull from multiple platforms and distill the data into clear, digestible insights. Franchisees don’t just see numbers; they see patterns they can act on immediately that are revenue opportunities.
What’s more, when one franchisee requests a new kind of report, that solution can often be shared across the entire franchise system and, in some cases, other concepts, creating efficiencies and insights that benefit every brand under the umbrella.
The Best of Both Worlds
The first months of franchise ownership are critical. Without the right support, new owners can feel overwhelmed by licensing requirements, vendor relationships, budgeting, and technology setup. A parent company can take the pressure off by dedicating resources to the training and onboarding process, walking franchisees step-by-step through these crucial early stages.
At the same time, training remains brand specific. This balance ensures that franchisees receive both the tailored expertise they need to run their particular business and the structural support that makes the launch process smoother. The result is confidence. Both franchisees and the brand know they are set up for success.
A common question is whether shared services dilute a brand’s identity. The answer, when the model is structured correctly, is no. Each brand under a parent company still has its own leadership team—its own president, operations managers, and marketing professionals. The shared services act as a backbone, not a replacement.
Many parent companies, like Buzz Brands, also operate at least one corporate-owned location per brand. This keeps the leadership team connected to the realities of day-to-day operations, ensuring strategies and resources remain grounded in the needs of franchisees.
With a dedicated support team at the brand level and the resources of a larger parent company, franchisees get the best of both worlds.
The Synergy Energy
Beyond the operational advantages, there’s also an energy that comes from being part of a multi-brand family. Conferences and conventions bring together owners from different services, sparking collaboration and cross-promotion opportunities. For instance, a customer who trusts one brand may be more open to trying another within the same parent company family, especially when franchisees work together locally.
While some parent companies encourage or incentivize multi-brand ownership, it’s not the only measure of success. What matters most is that each brand has the strength to stand on its own, while still benefiting from the collective.
This model is particularly effective in the home services industry because many operational frameworks overlap—routing, scheduling, vehicle fleets, and technology systems, to name a few. By leveraging these similarities, parent companies can create efficiencies that make every brand stronger without forcing them into a one-size-fits-all mold.
In the end, the role of a parent company is not to overshadow the brands it supports, but to amplify them. Shared services provide marketing muscle, data-driven insights, and training resources that would be out of reach for many smaller or emerging brands. At the same time, each brand retains its identity, leadership, and direct connection to its franchisees.
The power of the parent company is that it gives franchisees confidence, and it gives brands an infrastructure to grow…benefiting the individual owner and strengthening the entire family.
By Brian Garrison, COO of Buzz Franchise Brands and President of Wonderly Lights