There’s a lot that goes into choosing the right elderly care franchise opportunity, including local market conditions. Seniors in different communities face different circumstances, hold different values, and have different care needs. Successful care providers tailor their business accordingly, matching their business model and service offerings to the needs of local seniors.

But with some franchise systems, you have limited room to tailor your business. So, it’s important that you find an elderly care franchise opportunity that’s compatible with your local market.

With some franchisors, like Visiting Angels^®, this is less of a concern. We intentionally developed our elderly care franchise opportunity so that franchisees could adapt it to different types of communities. This has allowed Visiting Angels franchise owners to find success in regions with widely divergent demographics, geographies, and regulatory conditions.

But with other franchisors — especially smaller, regional brands — you’ll need to be careful. A number of these franchisors have limited experience with administering care in different types of communities, developing services for seniors with unique care needs, or regulatory compliance in certain states.

The Importance of Local Markets to Elderly Care Franchises

When you run a local business, your success depends on your local market. A business that thrives in one kind of community may struggle in others. You can’t always take a successful business model and transplant into a new market. Instead, you need a business model that makes sense for your local community.

This might sound obvious, but it’s easy to overlook in an elderly care franchise opportunity. Many people assume that elderly care works more or less the same from one community to the next. That’s simply not the case. Regional geography, local demographics, community values, and state regulations can impact the viability of an elderly care franchise opportunity.

Even if you purchase a franchise with a top-rated brand, you might discover that their franchise model isn’t suited to your local market. Many franchise brands are developed in a limited region or tailored to a specific type of community.

If you choose the wrong elderly care franchise opportunity for your local market, you could run into any number of problems. You might run into unexpected licensing difficulties. You might have trouble building trust with local seniors and their families. Or you might find that there simply isn’t demand for the kind of elderly care that your franchise is built to provide.

Matching an Elderly Care Franchise Opportunity with Your Local Market

Finding the right elderly care franchise opportunity for your local market will depend on a number of factors. While these aren’t the only factors you should be considering, it’s important that they aren’t overlooked.

Here are some of the questions you might want to ask as you evaluate different elderly care franchise opportunities:

Will the brand’s messaging resonate with the elderly community in your local market?
Does their business model only work in communities with high, mid-level, or low average incomes?
Do they have marketing materials appropriate for your community?
Is their business model tailored to a certain type of area — e.g., rural, suburban, or urban?
Can they help you navigate local, municipal, or state regulations in your area?

In addition to these questions, ask whether or not the brand has existing franchisees in similar communities. If they do, see if you can speak with these franchisees directly. This is often the best gauge of whether you’ve found the right elderly care franchise opportunity for your market. At the same time, it gives you the chance to ask franchisees how they’ve adapted to specific conditions in their markets.

Adapting Elderly Care Franchise Opportunities to Different Markets

While some elderly care franchise opportunities are built for a specific kind of market, most offer some degree of market flexibility. This is a typical feature of larger brands, since these brands need to operate in a wider range of communities.

At Visiting Angels, for example, we offer a business model that franchisees can easily adapt to local markets. Our franchisees have a wide degree of latitude in how they structure their business, how they administrate care, and to a certain degree the type of services they choose to provide. At the same time, we provide the education, support, and resources needed for a successful elderly care franchise opportunity.

This way, our franchisees have the tools they need to deliver exceptional care wherever they’re based, from Las Vegas, Nevada to Monroe, Michigan to Maryland’s Eastern Shore. By providing franchisees with the tools they need to serve their local markets, we’ve built one of the most widely recognized elderly care brands in the country.

Learn more about the Visiting Angels elderly care franchise opportunity by calling 800-365-4189 or requesting information online.