IN THIS GUIDE · Buying a franchised service centre: the franchise agreement decides half the investor questions before the visa file starts
Start with the E-2 eligibility and application overview
The franchise fee and what else counts as invested
The initial franchise fee, the transfer fee payable to the franchisor, the purchase price paid to the departing franchisee, required equipment and signage, initial training costs, the lease deposit and opening inventory are all ordinarily part of the investment, because each is spent to acquire and start this enterprise. Continuing royalties are operating expenses rather than investment. The file should present a schedule that lists each payment, its date, its recipient and the document behind it, and should separate money already spent from money contractually committed. What must stay out of that schedule is the cost of the immigration application itself, which buys status rather than a business. The total must also be substantial in the proportional sense: enough, relative to the cost of purchasing and operating this particular enterprise, to demonstrate the investors’ financial commitment to its success.
Does franchisor control defeat develop and direct?
The requirement is that the investor develops and directs the enterprise, which ordinarily means owning at least 50 percent or otherwise possessing operational control. A franchise agreement constrains how the business is run, sometimes tightly, without transferring ownership or day-to-day control: the franchisee still hires and fires, sets schedules, manages cash, and bears the risk. A franchise agreement does not itself defeat eligibility, but the file should meet the point head-on by attaching the agreement, identifying who holds the shares, and describing the decisions the buyers make themselves. The place this genuinely fails is an arrangement so managed that the buyer is effectively an employee of the system, or a passive owner with a manager running everything.
Consent, territory and the assumptions in the projections
A transfer that the franchisor has not approved is not a transaction yet, and approval often depends on the buyer's training, financial qualification and sometimes an interview. Get the consent in writing before filing, together with the remaining term of the agreement, the renewal rights and the territory. Projections that assume a ten-year horizon are unsupportable if the agreement expires in three with renewal at the franchisor's discretion, and projections that assume expansion into a neighbouring town are unsupportable if the territory does not include it. An officer comparing the business plan to the agreement will notice, and the plan is where credibility is usually lost.
Marginality, staff and the couple's own draw
The enterprise must be more than marginal, meaning it must do more than provide a minimal living for the investors. A service centre with technicians on payroll and an existing customer base makes that argument on the historical numbers, which is a strong position compared with a start-up. Support it with three years of the seller's financial statements, the payroll register, the staff who will stay, and a projection that shows income beyond the couple's living costs. If the buyers intend to reduce staffing and take a larger draw, the plan must say so honestly, because a renewal application will be read against what was filed today.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.