Franchise businesses are actually everywhere, yet what is it exactly? Actually, there are popular franchise businesses around and most of these companies have already established themselves all around the globe and the leading companies across the world. On the other hand, you may be thinking about what franchise exactly is. Well, you only have to dig deeper into the hub of every business world and simply discover the information about the franchising businesses. Actually, the lists of these top franchises are then offered out in most of publications. They are definitely good to look at for some sort of ideas. You only need to find out the things that make such companies get on the top lists around. Usually, those rankings are then based up on the total sales or the most amount of franchised locations. This is definitely because; it is the only kind of consistent data outsiders could get on most of these franchise businesses. Most of the top franchises aren’t really publicly traded and do not even release the earnings claims into their FDD’s. The only thing is that, they are needed by the FTC in order to disclose the number of locations that they have and then release the financial statements, as the parent company, or the franchisor itself. The publications providing the franchise rankings have really no choice, yet it is only to focus on the restricted data for compiling down their lists as well as recommendations. Thus, it would be best for you to use the best of the lists as well as franchise rankings strictly for the ideas in order to jumpstart your search for a better franchise. Keep it in mind, the biggest does not really mean that it is the best. There is more than three thousand of active franchise business around and most of them choose to simply grow into a slower pace. The only way for you to determine what franchise best for you is by investigating your very own purposes for going into this kind of business. You must also continue to interview few of the existing franchise owners when it comes to their experiences. Simply ensure that you organize your findings and compile the financials into the cash flow spreadsheet. In the end, good places to review the rankings are definitely the major publications like the Entrepreneur Magazine or the Wall Street Journal. It will surely help you out for brainstorming.