Brent Bohn, fourth from the right, attends the grand opening of WBF Management’s 47th McDonald’s restaurant in late 2023. Bohn leads WBF with his father-in-law, Mark Watson, and brother-in law, Brett Brigham. Watson founded the company in 1996.
A major Las Vegas-based McDonald’s franchisee opened its 47th restaurant in September, its 27th year with McDonald’s.
WBF Management comprises Mark Watson and his sons-in-law, Brent Bohn and Brett Brigham. The trio’s stores are mostly in the Las Vegas area, with some in Phoenix. Watson started the business in 1996 and brought on his sons-in-law years later.
“I got into the business a little bit on accident,” Bohn said. After marrying Watson’s daughter, Bohn began working with his father-in-law on the weekends to build a relationship with him. Bohn grew interested in the business, but Watson didn’t immediately bring him on board.
“He’s just like, ‘There’s easier ways to make a living, you don’t want to do this.’ I think he was really testing me to make sure this is what I wanted to do,” Bohn said.
He passed Watson’s test, took “a big pay cut” and joined the business, starting “at the bottom of the barrel” to learn the ins and outs of McDonald’s. “My goal all along was to become an owner and get approved,” Bohn said, which he eventually did. “He and I became partners a few years later. I was gonna go buy my own restaurants, but he asked me to stay in and be his partner.”
Bohn’s tips for working with family? Keep business and family separate—advice many family franchisee groups live by, too. “Clear-defined roles and responsibilities has been key for us. We’re not stepping on each other’s toes and we’re letting people that are doing their job do their job,” Bohn said. Some other family members who joined the company “have been huge successes,” he continued. But not all of them have worked out. “We’ve let them go and we’ve fired them, or they’ve quit and moved on on their own. … We’re business partners first, we just happen to be related.”
McDonald’s global sales hit $118 billion in 2022 across more than 40,000 units worldwide. That’s 5.1 percent systemwide sales growth, despite unit count increasing by a scant 0.6 percent. Of its 40,275 stores, 95 percent are franchised, and it’s not cheap to open a restaurant.
The initial investment range to open a McDonald’s is between $1.5- and $2.5 million.
With nearly 50 stores in two states, Bohn can’t be in every store every day. WBF’s managers are charged with daily operations, and Bohn lends himself as a resource to those managers. Other than that, he aims to leave them to run the stores themselves.
“One of the biggest teachers of success is failure,” he said. “So allowing them to go make mistakes, to deal with the repercussions of some of their mistakes and handle them has really shaped them and molded them into better leaders.”
He continued, “At this point, I can say they run the organization better than I ever did back when I was in that role.” Bohn also works a lot with McDonald’s corporate and on other big-picture strategies.
Much of WBF’s growth has come by way of acquiring units from operators looking to retire or downsize, Bohn said. WBF builds new stores as well, and now that McDonald’s is “back in growth mode,” Bohn said, the group has been awarded a few new stores, including two restaurants that opened in the second half of 2023.
Bohn enjoys opening new stores because of the brand-new equipment and he gets to hire a new team of employees. “That’s the backbone of what we do. We have great people, we try to stay very focused on them, trying to create a family environment as much as possible,” he said.
With acquisitions, though, the team comes with the store, so there is an adjustment for employees to adapt to new ownership, and for WBF to adjust to the team. “For us, we’ve been really good at being able to come in and add value and try not to disrupt too many things,” Bohn said. “Instead of having them join our team, we try to join their team.”
WBF is always looking for new opportunities. “We’re always in growth mode,” Bohn said. “I think that if I ever got out of growth mode, I would probably retire and get out.”