I am relatively new to this business, but I did run a couple of small businesses before. I was never going to make a fortune in either, but both had similar operations available as a franchise. I looked into the costs of each one and compared the 'advantages'. I didn't find any. They were more expensive to set up, had ongoing costs, and offered little in the way of extra publicity. Guess which I chose?
However, I can see that franchises do work, the McDonalds model proves that, so maybe someone can prove me wrong.