Business & Tech

If you are a foreign brand thinking about franchising into Vietnam, here are the things you absolutely must know. Vietnam mandates a minimum 15 working days between franchise disclosure and contract signing under Decree 35/2006/ND-CP and Commercial Law 2005 (Articles 284–291). Unlike the United States where the FTC Franchise Rule mandates a 14-calendar-day waiting window, Vietnam requires franchisors to provide prospective franchisees with a disclosure document at least 15 wo

AI Agents in Franchise Operations: What Stanford's JobBench Tells You Stanford SALT Lab's JobBench benchmark (May 2026) provides the clearest sector-level map for deciding which franchise roles are ready for AI agent deployment today and which will damage brand equity if automated too early. The research surveyed 1,500 workers and 52 AI experts across 844 tasks in 104 occupations, creating a dual-lens audit that reveals the gap between what workers want agents to do and what

Multi-Unit Franchisee Concentration 2026: What 19% Controlling 59% Means for New Investors As of 2025, 19.3% of franchisees operate multiple units and collectively control 58.8% of all franchised locations—a critical signal buried in the FRANdata/IFA 2026 Franchising Economic Outlook (February 2026). Before you commit capital, you need to understand who already owns the system around you and what their dominance will cost your expansion prospects and profitability. Question 1

Distressed Franchise Due Diligence: What Red Robin Reveals Red Robin Gourmet Burgers (NASDAQ: RRGB) reported Q1 2026 results last week, and buried beneath the margin improvements is a dynamic every sophisticated franchise investor should study in real time. CEO David Pace signaled the brand might end up 65% to 75% company-operated, implying the sale of up to 15% of its store system. Six units closed in Q1 alone, with roughly 20 expected for the full year. This is distressed f

Summary of the Book "Nhượng quyền khởi nghiệp" by Nguyễn Phi Vân Nhượng quyền khởi nghiệp is a Vietnamese-language book by Nguyễn Phi Vân arguing that franchising is not a shortcut to business ownership but a disciplined system for replicating proven value — and that first-time operators in Vietnam are buying into that system far too casually. Published for aspiring franchise operators and early-stage investors, the book sits at the intersection of entrepreneurship education

What Is Go Global Holdings? Go Global Holdings is a Vietnam-headquartered franchise development organization chaired by Nguyễn Phi Vân, built to help Vietnamese and Southeast Asian brands structure, fund, and execute international franchise expansion. It is not a franchisor in the conventional sense. It is the infrastructure layer behind a brand's cross-border move — the entity that sits between an ambitious SEA brand owner and the international master franchisee, area develo

Summary of the Book "Tôi Đi Tìm Tôi" by Nguyễn Phi Vân Tôi đi tìm tôi — translated literally as I Go in Search of Myself — is a Vietnamese-language personal development book by Nguyễn Phi Vân, author, franchise strategist, and one of Southeast Asia's most recognized voices on self-directed growth and global readiness. The book's central argument is this: most people spend their lives building a career, a reputation, or a résumé without first establishing who they actually are

Micro-Franchising and Recurring Revenue: Why Southeast Asia Is the Next Testing Ground Every franchise conversation in Southeast Asia eventually lands on the same three topics: bubble tea, fast food, and who has the rights to the next American casual dining brand. Meanwhile, the category quietly generating some of the most resilient unit economics in US franchising right now involves picking up dog waste. That gap in attention is where the opportunity lives. --- What Micro-Fr

When the Legal Walls Come Down: How to Build a Franchise System That Doesn't Need Non-Competes The FTC's enforcement action against Rollins — ordering the pest-control giant to stop enforcing non-competes on more than 18,000 employees — is being read as a labor story. It is not. For anyone building or operating a franchise system, it is a stress test arriving in the form of a headline. The question it forces is simple and uncomfortable: if the legal walls came down tomorrow,

Why SEA's Franchise Moment Is Now — And What Could Still Kill It The signals that serious franchise investors track are all flashing green across Southeast Asia right now. Vietnam posted 7.8% GDP growth in Q1 2025. Regional capital is committing to long-cycle commercial real estate at conviction scale. A consumer middle class that has been "almost ready" for a decade is finally arriving at the spending threshold where branded, repeatable experience becomes a daily habit rathe

Micro-Franchising and Recurring Revenue: Why Southeast Asia Is the Next Testing Ground A franchise selling pet-waste removal on a monthly subscription basis sounds, on first hearing, like a punchline. Look at the unit economics and it stops being funny very quickly. Scoop Brothers, a US-based pet-waste-removal franchise, runs on a model that most traditional franchise investors would overlook entirely: sub-$50K entry cost, a service that customers pay for on repeat every mont

Summary of the Book "Nym – Tôi của tương lai" Nym – Tôi của tương lai is a Vietnamese-language book by Nguyễn Phi Vân that asks one question most professionals avoid until it is too late: who do you need to become before the world you are building for arrives? Written for Vietnamese readers navigating rapid technological and economic disruption, the book is a structured self-development framework — not a motivational manual — that moves from identity to capability to delibera