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 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. It’s not that franchisees don’t care about security. It’s that 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 franchisor is very, very stingy. 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.
The area director is the one who actually makes the call
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 on price.
There was a moment a couple of years in where the franchisor told him I was charging too much and he should look at other vendors. The area director’s response, paraphrased: “You want to go use somebody else and get screwed? 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 “doing the install well” actually looks 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 the Bond Bridge 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 this means if you’re operating multiple stores
A few takeaways if you’re running a chain, a franchise, or a multi-location ownership group and you’re thinking about security.
Don’t wait for the break-in. Or, if you’re going to wait — and a lot of operators do, because that’s how the budget conversation works — at least know in advance who you’re going to call. The 24 hours after a store gets hit is not 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.
Standardize across stores. If you’re going to install 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. It’s that 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.
Pick somebody who’ll still answer the phone in year three. The chain I’m describing started doing business with me in 2020. We just 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.
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
