The virus is only accelerating the changes

Dr. Katalin Mandel
general secretary
Hungarian Franchise Association

Katalin Mandel, general secretary of the Hungarian Franchise Association informed that they organise webinars for members every other week. The recession has hit the horeca sector the hardest. According to the general secretary, young franchise networks are threatened the most. As for major chains, she expects no serious problems – if one unit goes out of business, someone else will definitely take over the unit.

Ms Mandel thinks: the biggest problem is that in the future a part of retail will be done online and the recession is speeding up this process. Shopping malls going bankrupt and fancy stores disappearing will have an influence on the future of franchise too. The personal connection between shop owner and customer will be lost, it can happen that half of shoppers will stay at home and stay online. It is a possible scenario that due to the recession franchise owners will have to go online too. The association’s forecast is that they are going to lose about 10 percent of partners. //