Many associate franchises with food service or retail storefronts, but entrepreneurs in sectors as diverse as health and wellness, tax and investment, and mortgage services can enjoy the considerable success that comes from opening a franchise in a niche industry.
Nutters Everyday Naturals
In June 1982, Dr. Jim Cranston and his family set out to improve other families’ wellness through healthy foods, opening a bulk food store in Medicine Hat, Alberta, called Nutters Fruit & Nut Company. The response was, well, nuts. Today, there are 27 Nutters locations from British Columbia to Manitoba, says Brad Winsor, president, and he’s projecting further growth, expecting to have 300 stores nationally in five to eight years.
Nutters began franchising in 1983, says Calgary-based Winsor, with its first franchised location in Brooks, Alberta, followed soon by Red Deer in 1983 and Prince Albert, Saskatchewan in 1984. (The owner and manager of the Prince Albert location, Janine Favreau, is the system’s longest-running franchise operator, having celebrated 40 years in 2024!) Today, 16 Nutters locations are franchised, and it’s that model the system is using to expand further in the western provinces and in Ontario. East of Ontario, Winsor explains, Nutters is considering master franchisor agreements. However, expansion doesn’t necessarily mean entering big cities. Nutters wants stores in communities of 10,000 to 80,000.
“That’s where we do our best work,” says Winsor. And that’s where Nutters finds customers that fit its ideal profile: mothers aged 35 to 45 in households with an income of $90,000 or higher, and those 55 and older who can afford supplements. What do they buy? Winsor says about 60 per cent of Nutters’ sales are of vitamins and supplements, 30 per cent are natural and diet-specific products, and 10 per cent are personal care products.
A turnkey franchise costs from $500,000 to $550,00 for stores that are typically 2,000 to 2,500 square feet with street front locations. “It’s for the visibility,” says Winsor. “And they’ve got to have lots of parking.” What the stores don’t have, for the time being anyway, is an identical look and feel, although Nutters is moving towards that without imposing complete uniformity. “We mix it up a bit,” says Winsor, noting the importance of “going with the flow,” in the health retail industry.
For the last 40 years, most Nutters franchisees were women. Now, Winsor explains he’s seeing more men invest in his system, including newcomers to Canada from India. Concrete business experience is a plus for prospective Nutters franchisees, as Winsor notes it will help them understand cash flow, a crucial part of retail management. Training occurs in person in Red Deer, Alberta.
As for the benefits of a Nutters franchise, Winsor says it’s a highly recognizable brand in Canada, and just one of four health food chains in the country. And the benefits will continue as, he points out, Generation Z is starting to assert itself in the market, meaning a new, health-conscious swath of potential customers.
MrTaxes.ca
Tax returns are in Robert Stone’s blood. As a kid, he would watch his grandfather and mother prepare them at the kitchen table, so it was small wonder he too would eventually move his career in that direction. It was tax preparation that he took up when an accident in 1996 meant he could no longer work as a tradesman. But it wasn’t long before he expanded his services to bookkeeping, mortgages, investments, and insurance, says Stone from Vancouver, British Columbia. By 2015, MrTaxes.ca had 42 offices in in Ontario, Alberta, and B.C. In 2018 he relaunched the MrTaxes.ca brand, offering a full suite of financial services.
Now president of the company, Stone says his system uses a hybrid model where the franchise is jointly owned between MrTaxes.ca and the franchisee. Stone says he wants to establish 10 franchises in British Columbia before looking toward other provinces where he expects to set up master franchisee arrangements.
Start-up costs for franchisees range from $5,000 to $10,000 with an additional fee structure, although MrTaxes.ca does not charge royalties. Training is online and takes 18 to 24 hours to complete, and uses a program that MrTaxes.ca created. As for his potential franchise partners, Stone says he looks for ambition, a positive attitude, an entrepreneurial spirit, and perhaps the ability to communicate in a language besides English or French that will allow them to serve clients in their own language. “A MrTaxes.ca franchise partnership is really for people who have started their financial business and want to scale it,” says Stone. That outlook will dovetail neatly with their clientele, too, he continues, since the system’s specialty markets are the self-employed and corporations.
Stone encourages potential franchisees to take the MrTaxes.ca training course to assess the system. To further sweeten the deal, he points out that MrTaxes.ca franchises have a benefit of low cost of entry, the support and protection of a recognized brand, and a consistent, recurring customer base. Along with tax filings, franchisees have the opportunity to expand their service offerings with associated brands MrInvestments.ca, MrInsurance.ca, MrBookkeeping.ca, and mortgages.
Haystax Mortgage
Paul Therien, founder and CEO of Haystax Mortgage, is nothing if not candid about his system and his industry. He says just 20 per cent of Canadians use a mortgage broker to get a mortgage, with the other 80 per cent using a bank or similar institution to obtain a home loan. And that’s where the trouble starts, according to Therien. “The vast majority of homeowners don’t get the best interest rates,” he says from his office in Vancouver, British Columbia. “The number one complaint [in the sector] is about competition from banks and interest rates. The question we should be asking is, why do banks and others enjoy an 80 per cent market share?”
With those numbers in mind, and after a long career in mortgage brokerage and financial services, Therien decided to do something about it. “That’s where Haystax was born,” he says. “It’s been a long career that started in 1991. I was as new and as green as you could get.” But in the years since then, there isn’t a lot he hasn’t seen or done in real estate and financial services, and that experience has lead him to introduce a new franchise brand and model to the mortgage space, Therien explains. It’s virtual, for one thing, and prospective franchisees don’t necessarily need a mortgage brokers licence, although the brokers and brokerages themselves do. The system’s cost structure is also unique. Instead of an royalty-based model, Therien says around $3,000 a month will cover brand fees and fixed costs, including a full technology stack and tools, or what he calls “a brokerage in a box.”
Thanks to Haystax’s attendance at multiple Franchise Canada Shows, which Therien has high praise for, Haystax is in discussions with 11 candidates for franchises (eight in Ontario and three in British Columbia) and has more than 80 expressions of interest waiting to be assessed. Haystax candidates are roughly evenly split between men and women, says Therien, and they all have an entrepreneurial background in common. Training at Haystax is all online, and all audiovisual material is professionally produced and stored at a central hub, accessed by each franchisee’s own server.
The benefits of investing in Haystax are many, says Therien. For one, the system’s model is unique to its niche and built to drive as much revenue as possible to franchisees. Additionally, a franchising advisory council gives franchisees a seat at the table to help navigate and decide the future of the Haystax brand.