Franchise Agreements: Canada

Franchise Fee Dept: One such client recently got into a fast-food business with the expectation of earning $1 mil-lion in revenue and $200,000 in profit in his first year. But there was a $25,000 upfront franchise fee, plus a 6% royalty, a 2% national advertising fee and a 2% local advertising fee. Ten per cent right off the top killed any chance of turning a profit, according to Vancouver Sun. Among the challenges facing immigrants are a lack of under-standing of how these agreements work in Canada, poor English skills which doesn't help their understanding of the fine print in a 250-page disclosure document, if they're even given one and a tendency to buy into unproven franchise systems, perhaps startups with fewer than 10 locations and steven Goldman hears a lot of horror stories about the world of franchising. As one of Canada's prominent franchise lawyers, he sees a lot of immigrants who come to Canada to "buy a job" by purchasing a franchised business. "Immigrants - are led to believe these franchise agreements are standard-form agreements or that it's non-negotiable," says Mr. Goldman, of Gold-man Hine LLP, adding that's not always the case. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.