Within their own community in Boston, Omar and Raynya Simmons saw many talented minority employees helping run franchise businesses “but they wouldn’t ever have thought they could own a franchise—it wasn’t even within the realm of possibility,” said Omar Simmons.
With the launch of the Franchise Ascension Initiative in partnership with the International Franchise Association Foundation, the Simmonses aim to change not only that mindset but the reality by helping prepare people from underrepresented groups and those who are economically disadvantaged to become franchisees.
Putting in $250,000 of their own money as seed funding and now having raised more than $2 million, the Simmonses announced the Franchise Ascension Initiative during the IFA Convention February 18 in Phoenix.
The effort will start with a six-month pilot program and will leverage the IFA’s existing education platforms, resources from the Yum Center for Franchise Excellence at the University of Louisville, along with a mentorship component. It will culminate in a pitch contest on a specific franchise opportunity, with participants preparing a business and financial model to present to a group of franchisees, suppliers and franchisor executives for evaluation.
Raynya Simmons said the idea for a franchise accelerator program came to her after hearing Shaquille O’Neal speak at the IFA Convention in 2022, when the former NBA star talked about growing up poor in New Jersey and later, the opportunities he had to invest in franchises and even start his own. Next on stage were those who’d completed the Certified Franchise Executive program, “and no people of color were on the stage,” she recalled.
“I went home and I started looking at who owned the franchises in our communities, and it was never a person of color, and that broke my heart,” she said. “That’s when I started talking to Omar about the idea of an accelerator program.”
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Omar Simmons, who is Black, was raised in inner city Boston by a mother who worked multiple jobs and still had to rely on food stamps and public housing.
The descendant of slaves—“My grandparents were really the first generation not to be born into slavery,” he said—Simmons credited his athletic ability for opening the door to attend Princeton University, where he was co-captain of the track and field team. He went on to Harvard Business School and a career in finance before founding Boston-based Exaltare Capital in 2012, when he bought 15 Planet Fitness locations.
Simmons ran ECP Planet Fitness as CEO until 2021, growing it to 108 locations before a sale to TowerBrook Capital Partners. In 2022 Exaltare invested in an Urban Air franchisee, and in early 2023 it acquired GF Midwest Inc., one of the largest developers and operators of the Good Feet Store. Simmons and Exaltare also last year joined with Conscious Capital Growth to acquire 34-unit Uni K Wax.
A stated goal of the Franchise Ascension Initiative is to “narrow the wealth gap by catalyzing diversity in ownership in franchising.” In 2022, the typical white family had about six times as much wealth as the typical Black family, and five times as much as the typical Hispanic family, the Federal Reserve noted in an October 2023 report on racial inequality in consumer finances.
Franchising, noted Simmons, can take people who have been disenfranchised and put them on a path toward wealth generation. The IFA’s data shows Black-owned franchise firms earn 2.2 times as much in sales compared to Black-owned independent businesses, on average.
And yet, just 3 percent of franchise businesses are owned by African Americans, the IFA reported in 2021 after conducting research in partnership with Oxford Economics. That report showed 26 percent of franchise businesses were owned by people of color, with Asian Americans owning 18 percent and Hispanic Americans owning 5 percent.
Outreach in communities of color will begin this year to identify prospective Franchise Ascension Initiative participants, said Simmons.
He and his wife are joined on the founding committee by: David Humphrey, CEO of Ignite Fitness Holdings; Carolyn Thurston, CEO and founder of Wisdom Senior Care; Earsa Jackson, an attorney at Clark Hill; Ericka Garza, board member at Workstream; Kathy Gosser, an assistant professor at the Yum Center for Franchise Excellence at the University of Louisville; Robert Huntington, CEO of Metric Collective; Mike Isakson, operating partner of private equity firm Mid Ocean Partners; Dan Monaghan, founder of PE firm Clear Summit Group; Richard Snow, lending manager with Bremer Bank; Steve White, chief operating officer and president of PuroClean; and Edith Wiseman, president of FranData.