A long time ago, before I did shutters, I was a franchisee for a Northern California gas station chain.
I didn’t love it. So I got out of it and went into the security shutter business. But the people stayed.
Years later, one of the franchisees from that same chain — a guy who knew me from the old days — got broken into. He needed somebody he could trust to come in fast. He called me.
That was eight stores ago.
Today, when any store in that chain decides to install shutters, I’m the one who gets the call. Not by accident. By pattern. And the pattern is worth understanding if you run any kind of multi-location business and you’re trying to figure out how security decisions actually get made when there’s a corporate office involved.
Why do franchise stores almost always wait until something happens?
Here’s something most security companies won’t tell you because they’re trying to sell you something. Franchise gas stations almost never install shutters proactively. Almost every job I’ve done for this chain — and I’ve done eight — happened after a break-in.
There’s a reason for that, and it’s not what you’d think. Franchisees do care about security. Franchise security spending almost always involves a conversation with corporate, and corporate is doing math on a different time horizon than the person standing inside the store.
A franchisee sees their store every day. They know which corner of the parking lot the neighborhood kids hang out in. They know which window has been tagged twice in a month. They know the way somebody walks past at 2 a.m. that doesn’t sit right.
Corporate sees a P&L. The shutter is a capital expense. Until there’s a break-in, the cost-benefit doesn’t pencil out on the spreadsheet. So the franchisee waits. They get hit. The math changes overnight, and now corporate’s writing the check.
They get beaten a couple of times before they even rely. The corporate approval cycle is slow. Things drag on for a long time before they pull the plug.
That’s not a complaint. That’s how the system works. And once you understand that’s how the system works, you understand why having a relationship at the area-director level matters more than how good your product is.
Who actually makes the call on a franchise security install?
Every multi-location chain I’ve worked with has somebody in this role. They’re not the franchisor. They’re not the franchisee. They sit in the middle. They visit the stores. They know the operators. They have authority to approve repairs and improvements at the store level, and they’re the one who gets the angry phone call when something goes wrong.
For this chain, that’s a guy I’ve known for years. After we did a few stores well, he started recommending me to other locations. After we did several more, he started defending me when corporate pushed back.
There was a moment a couple of years in where the franchisor pushed him to look at other vendors. The area director’s response, paraphrased: “You want to go use somebody else and get a worse deal? Go ahead. I’m sticking with him.”
That’s the conversation that decides who gets the next eight jobs in a multi-location franchise. Not the website. Not the marketing. Not the price quote. The trust the field-level decision-maker has built up over a series of installs that all went well.
What does “doing the install well” actually look like for a franchise?
Here’s what gets you invited back, in my experience.
Aesthetic — don’t make it ugly. The stores I replaced into this chain almost all had shutters that came before me. Some of them were ten, fifteen years old. They worked, mostly. But they looked terrible — bent slats, dented housing, exposed wiring, the kind of thing that hurts a brand. The first thing the area director told me when we did store number two was “make it look better than the old one.” Aesthetic is part of the spec at the franchise level, even though nobody writes it down.
Build-out — plan it before you cut. For every franchise install, I do a build-out drawing before any metal goes in. Where the junction box sits. Where the main supply runs. Where each shutter’s controller goes. I share it with my install crew so if I’m not on site, they know exactly what I had in mind. Most security shops don’t bother with the planning step. The result is a finished install that has wires running where they shouldn’t and conduits added later because somebody didn’t think it through.
Access — key fobs and apps. For franchise installs we usually program three key fobs to the main entrance — one for the franchisee, one for staff, one for the area director if they want it. Every shutter pairs with a phone app so the operator can open or close from their phone if they need to verify something at 3 a.m. without driving to the store. Small things. They’re the difference between an install that gets a thank-you and an install that gets you the next eight jobs.
Follow-through — pick up the phone. A shutter is mechanical. Sometimes things go wrong — a sensor flakes, a remote needs reprogramming, a slat takes a hit and bends. The franchisee calls. If you pick up, drive out, fix it, and don’t bill them for the visit, you’re the only shutter guy that chain will ever use. If you don’t, somebody else will. There’s no middle outcome on this.
What should you do right now if you operate multiple stores?
One — know who you’re going to call before the break-in. A lot of operators wait, because that’s how the budget conversation works. Fine. But the 24 hours after a store gets hit isn’t when you want to be price-shopping security vendors. The franchisees in this chain who handled it best were the ones whose area director already had my number saved. Get a name and a number on file now, before the day you need it.
Two — standardize across stores. If you’re installing shutters at multiple locations, do them with the same product family, the same control system, and the same install crew. The reason corporate buyers want this isn’t bureaucracy. Maintenance, training, and replacement parts get easier by an order of magnitude when every store runs the same setup. After eight stores in this chain, my crew can walk into any of them and know what they’re looking at.
Three — pick somebody who’ll still answer the phone in year three. This chain started doing business with me in 2020. We did another store earlier this year. The relationship has lasted longer than most security vendor relationships in commercial retail because I never made the mistake of treating the first install as a transaction. Every job is the audition for the next one. Pick a vendor whose business model assumes the same.
Questions multi-location operators ask after reading this
Should I standardize on one product across all my stores, or pick the best fit for each location? Standardize. The cost-savings from one product family across all locations are real — same parts, same install crew, same training for staff, same controller everyone already knows. Where I deviate is when a specific building can’t physically accommodate the standard install (low ceilings, historic facade, ADA clearance issues). In that case I’ll spec a variant of the same family with the same controls, not a different product. The goal is that any manager from any store can walk into any other store and know how to operate the shutter without a training session.
How do you handle warranty and maintenance once a shutter is two or three years old? For the franchise installs I’ve done, the rhythm goes like this: year one is rare for service calls — the shutter is new and the staff is being careful. Year two and three is when small things show up. A sensor flakes. A remote dies. A slat takes a hit from a delivery truck. If you set up the relationship right at install, those calls are short and cheap. The bigger maintenance moment is around year five — that’s when motors start to want service and the seals around the box need a look. Plan for that capex on a separate line from the original install.
What’s the right cadence for rolling shutters out across a chain — all at once, or one store at a time? It depends on whether you’re reacting to a pattern or building proactively. If a chain has just been hit, the priority store is the one that got broken into, then the nearest sister store on the same route the people likely came from. If you’re building proactively across the chain, start with the highest-revenue store or the one closest to the operator’s home base — that’s where the install gets the most attention from staff and becomes the proof point for the rest. Don’t try to do six at once. Two or three at a time is the right pace.
If corporate already has a preferred-vendor list, can I push back as a franchisee? Yes, and the area director is usually who you talk to. Corporate’s preferred-vendor list is often more about back-office approval than about anyone having vetted the vendor’s actual install quality at the store level. If you’ve got a vendor your area director already trusts from another location, the path forward is: get the area director to call corporate’s procurement contact, not the other way around. The chain’s purchasing system can usually approve a vendor a field decision-maker is already endorsing.
Where to start
If you run a chain, a franchise, or a multi-location ownership group and you want to talk through what a unified security plan looks like across your stores, give me a call. I’ll come to your busiest location, walk it with you, and we’ll build a plan from there. No pitch. If your existing setup is fine, I’ll tell you that.
— Jessie Bajwa
Owner, Affordable Security Shutters
Fairfield, CA · 707-840-3435
