Franchise expo touts do-it-yourself business--with a safety net.

• Author: Taylor, Mike
• Position: ON SMALL BIZ - Editorial

For five years, Pakistan immigrant Kalim Yaqub operated Discount Liquor Mart in the Lakeside Center shopping mall on 44th Avenue and Sheridan Boulevard. Business was good--while it lasted.

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But in January, the mall's new owners told Yaqub they were going to turn the property into a mixed-used development. They offered him a settlement to terminate his lease early.

Yaqub, who turns 50 in August, says the settlement was fair, but he still needed to find a new line of work. That's what brought him to the Colorado Franchise & Business Opportunities Expo, where about 60 exhibitors were on hand March 3-4 with dozens of options for going into business "for yourself but not by yourself," as the franchise industry motto goes.

Yaqub left the expo at the Denver Merchandise Mart after a few hours, still by himself and no closer to being back in business for himself. But he had gotten to kick the tires of enterprises such as Fresh-O-Matic Corp., a vending-machine company in Illinois that you can get into with two snack-and-beverage dispensers for as little as $6,000; and Nick-N-Willy's Take-N-Bake Pizza, formed 19 years ago in Boulder and now based in Centennial, seeking franchisees with at lease $165,000 to invest.

Other exhibitors included at least three ice-cream outfits (the traditional Baskin-Robbins, the cryogenically frozen Dippin' Dots, and the super-premium Maggie Moo's), along with supplement retailer Max Muscle Sports Nutrition, Minuteman Press printers, and Math Monkey learning centers.

Math Monkey Director of Franchising Jamie Sollinger emphasized a point of differentiation between his tutoring service for 6-to 13-year olds, and all the food franchisers around him.

"No spoilage issues," he said. "And we're raising IQ's, not cholesterol. All you need to get started is a box and a bathroom."

That and $85,000 to $145,000 in startup costs.

Yaqub said he was not impressed with the expo, although he considered the event worth the $8 admission fee.

"I think whatever information I got, it was worth it," he said. "Most of those people (exhibitors) were from out of state, so ordinarily the only way you can talk to them is on the phone."

Yaqub says if he can't find a suitable new business for himself, there are managerial jobs he could fall back on, likely in the same industry in which he apparently built a solid reputation in five years.

"When I was in the liquor industries, I got to know people who are big shots in Denver, like...