For Glen Bell, the eighth time was the charm.

As Debra Lee Baldwin recounts in her 1999 biography Taco Titan, Bell started no fewer than seven businesses in Southern California between 1948 and 1957: four separate hamburger stands, two different chains of taquerias and a miniature golf course....

With another positive jobs report and dip in the U.S. unemployment rate, on top of oil prices that are still tumbling, the International Franchise Association (IFA) joined the chorus with some good news of its own: franchise businesses are projected...

It's no mystery that McDonald's is struggling right now. Given the killer combination of its complicated menu, consumers' perception of its food as low-quality, and increasingly fierce competition in the space, the world's largest fast-food chain has suffered seven straight months of comparable-store sales declines...

Buying a franchise offers many advantages that aren't available to entrepreneurs starting a business from scratch. Perhaps the most significant is that you get a proven system of operation and training in how to use it. New franchisees can avoid a lot of the mistakes startup entrepreneurs typically make because the franchisor has already perfected daily routine operations through trial and error...