Common misconception. They don't franchise in the sense everyone normally means it. They call "managing the store" a franchise.
If you "franchise" a CFA, you don't own the store, you don't own the land, they severely control your income, you are required to physically work at the store (in other words, they control you as a laborer), and you can't re-sell the franchise since you don't own it. You have no equity. They refer to you as an operator.
When you leave the business, CFA picks someone else to give it to. You get paid nothing because you never owned it.
They're also very weird in picking their operators. I can't speak for every CFA, but where I live all the operators are white evangelical Christians. This is probably a side-effect of CFA's policy of not letting anyone who has debt be an operator, and buying everything without financing is a big thing in the evangelical Christian community thanks to Dave Ramsey.
