1. Who we are
FindMyFranchise.co.uk is a UK franchise directory. We list franchise opportunities and suppliers, and we pass enquiries from people researching franchises to the brands they ask about.
This website is operated by Find My Franchise Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 14652211, whose registered office is at 86-90 Paul Street, London, England, EC2A 4NE. In this policy, “we”, “us” and “our” mean that company.
We are the data controller for the personal information described here. We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office under registration number ZB559376.
Our Data Protection Officer is Mr Marcus Brooks. You can reach him, or anyone else here, at info@findmyfranchise.co.uk.
2. What this policy covers
This policy covers the personal information we collect through this website.
It does not cover what a franchise brand does with your details once we have passed your enquiry to them. From that point the brand is a separate data controller, responsible for its own use of your information and for its own privacy policy. Section 6 explains this in more detail.
It also does not cover other websites we link to. We are not responsible for their privacy practices.
3. The information we collect
What we hold depends on how you use the site.
If you enquire about a franchise
When you add a franchise to your request list and submit an enquiry, we collect your first and last name, email address, telephone number, and postal address including town, county and postcode. We also collect the details you choose to give about your plans: how much you are looking to invest, your timeframe, your preferred contact method and best time to call, and any comments you write. We record which franchises you enquired about, and the date and time.
We create an account for you at the same time so you can return to your request list, and we email you a link to set a password.
If you create an account, or claim or advertise a listing
We collect your name, email address, and where you give them, your telephone number, company name and job title. When you claim an existing listing we also record which listing you claimed and the email address you claimed it from, because a claim from an address at the brand’s own domain is approved automatically.
We record the page you signed up from and the website that referred you, so we can tell which parts of the site bring in advertisers.
If you buy an advertising package we hold your billing details and a record of your orders and subscriptions. Card details are handled entirely by our payment provider and never reach our servers — see section 10.
If you contact us or open a support ticket
We collect your name, email address, telephone number where given, the franchise or supplier your message concerns, and the content of your message and any subsequent correspondence.
If you subscribe to our newsletter
We collect your email address, and your name where you give it.
If you use the franchise quiz or finder
We record the answers you give — your budget, preferred industries, working style and regions — and the results shown to you, so we can see which questions are useful and improve the tool.
If you use our franchise assistant
Our franchise assistant answers questions about the franchises listed on this site. We record the questions you type, the answers it gives, which listings it suggested and the page you started on, so we can check its answers are accurate and improve it. To stop abuse we also keep a one-way scrambled fingerprint of your IP address, which cannot be turned back into the address. The answers are generated by an AI service provided by Anthropic (see section 10), which receives your questions in order to answer them. Anthropic does not use them to train its AI models. Your questions are not passed to any franchise brand. To contact a brand, use “Add to Request List”, which works as described in section 6. Please do not type personal details such as your phone number or email address into the assistant.
If you use live chat
If you click “Chat with us”, we collect the messages you send and any name or email address you choose to give, so we can reply. Live chat is provided by Tawk.to (see section 10), which also receives technical information such as your browser and approximate location when the chat opens. Nothing is loaded from Tawk.to until you click the button.
If you choose not to give us information
You are not obliged to give us anything. Where a field is marked as required on an enquiry form we need it to pass your enquiry on — without a name and an email address or telephone number, a franchise brand has no way to reply to you, so we cannot send the enquiry. Everything else is optional, and leaving it out only means the brand knows less about what you are looking for. If you buy advertising we need your billing details, because we cannot take payment or meet our tax obligations without them.
Information collected automatically
When you browse the site we collect technical information: pages viewed, the site or search that referred you, approximate location derived from your IP address, and your browser and device type. Sections 8 and 9 explain the cookies and analytics involved.
We also count views and clicks on individual franchise listings so we can show each advertiser how their listing is performing. That counting is deliberately anonymous: we store a one-way scrambled fingerprint of your IP address and browser rather than the address itself, so we can tell repeat views apart without being able to identify you or work backwards to your IP.
When you are signed in to an account
For security reasons, while you are signed in we keep a record of what you do on the site: when you sign in and out, the pages you view, the forms you send, and any changes you make to your account or to a listing (including what the information was before and after the change). We record the IP address and the type of browser and device used each time. We also record failed sign-in attempts, including the email address that was tried. This lets us protect the site and your account from bots and rogue sign-in attempts, spot misuse, and find out what happened if something goes wrong. We never record passwords. Only our own staff can see this record.
4. Where the information comes from
Most of what we hold comes directly from you, when you fill in a form, create an account or write to us.
We also build and maintain listings for franchise brands and suppliers using information that is already public: the brands’ own websites, the British Franchise Association’s membership register, and other public franchise directories. Where that information includes a named contact at a business — typically a franchise recruitment or head office contact — we hold their name, business email address, business telephone number and role.
If you are a business contact and we obtained your details this way, you have exactly the same rights as everyone else under section 13, including the right to ask us to delete your details or stop contacting you. Email info@findmyfranchise.co.uk and we will act on it.
We rely on our legitimate interest in maintaining an accurate, complete directory of UK franchise opportunities. We only collect business contact details in a business capacity, never personal or home contact details.
5. Why we use your information, and our lawful basis
Data protection law requires us to have a lawful basis for everything we do with your information. Ours are set out below.
| What we do | Why | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|
| Pass your enquiry to the franchise brands you selected | It is the service you asked us to perform | Performance of a contract with you |
| Create and run your account | So you can return to your request list, or manage a listing | Performance of a contract with you |
| Answer your questions and provide support | To respond to you | Legitimate interests — running a business that replies to the people who contact it |
| Check that enquiries reach brands, and chase the ones that do not | So your enquiry gets a response | Legitimate interests — making sure the service works |
| Take payment for advertising and manage subscriptions | To provide the advertising you bought | Performance of a contract, and legal obligation for tax records |
| Build and keep the directory accurate | So the listings are complete and current | Legitimate interests — maintaining a useful directory |
| Report to advertisers on how their listing performs | So advertisers can see what they are paying for | Legitimate interests, using anonymous counts only |
| Send our newsletter and marketing | To tell you about opportunities and content | Consent, which you can withdraw at any time |
| Analytics, and advertising if we introduce it | To understand how the site is used | Consent, given through the cookie banner |
| Answer your questions through our franchise assistant | To help you find franchises that suit you | Legitimate interests — helping visitors use the directory |
| Talk to you through live chat | To respond to you | Legitimate interests — replying to the people who contact us |
| Keep a record of account activity and sign-in attempts | For security, so we can protect the site and accounts from bots and rogue sign-in attempts, and investigate misuse | Legitimate interests — security |
| Protect the site from spam, scraping and abuse | To keep the site available and the data safe | Legitimate interests — security |
Where we rely on legitimate interests we have considered whether our interest is overridden by your rights, and concluded it is not. You can object to any of it — see section 13 — and we will stop unless we have compelling grounds to continue.
We do not make any decision about you by automated means alone that produces a legal or similarly significant effect. The franchise assistant only suggests listings you might want to look at; it does not decide anything about you.
6. Sending your enquiry to a franchise brand
This is the most important thing to understand about how the site works, so it has its own section.
When you submit an enquiry, we send the details you provided — your name, email address, telephone number, postal address, investment level, timeframe and comments — by email to each franchise brand you selected. Where a brand’s listing is managed on its behalf by a franchise consultancy, that consultancy receives the enquiry as well, because they are the people who will reply to you. We do not send your enquiry to anyone else.
Once a brand or its consultancy has your enquiry, they decide what they do with your information. They become a data controller in their own right, and their own privacy policy governs how they contact you, how long they keep your details and who they share them with. We cannot delete your details from their systems on your behalf. If you want them to stop contacting you or to erase your details, contact them directly — though if you tell us, we will pass the request on and give you the contact address we hold.
We do not sell enquiry data. We do not pass your enquiry to brands you did not select, or to any other directory or broker.
We keep our own copy of the enquiry so we have a record of what was sent, so you can see your request list, and so we can investigate if a brand does not respond.
7. Email tracking
The enquiry emails we send to franchise brands contain a small tracking image and tracked links. These let us record whether the brand opened your enquiry, and whether it followed the link through to its listing. We record the date and time of the first open and of any clicks, and the email software used to open the message.
We do this to check that enquiries are reaching brands and to follow up when they are not, so that your enquiry gets a response. We do not track the content of any reply.
This measurement is approximate in both directions: some email software blocks images, so a message that was read may show as unopened, and other software loads images automatically, so a message nobody read may show as opened. Recipients who would rather not be measured this way can turn off automatic image loading in their email software.
Our marketing emails and newsletters also record opens and clicks, in the same way and for the same reason. You can stop receiving those entirely using the unsubscribe link in any of them.
8. Cookies and similar technologies
We use cookies and similar storage to make the site work, to remember your preferences, and — only with your consent — to measure how the site is used. When you first visit, a banner lets you accept or reject everything that is not strictly necessary, and you can change your choice at any time through the cookie settings link in the footer.
| Cookie | Purpose | Lasts | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
request_list | Remembers the franchises in your request list between pages | 30 days | Necessary |
fmf_ocg, fmf_ocg_hint | After you send an enquiry, let you send further enquiries in one click for the rest of your visit, and show whose details will be used. Your details stay on our server; the cookies hold a random reference and your name with a shortened email address | Until you close the browser (12 hours at most) | Necessary |
fmf_sp_me | After you send an enquiry, stops the “someone just enquired” pop-ups showing you your own enquiry. It holds a scrambled code, not your email address | 24 hours | Necessary |
fmf_view | Remembers whether you prefer grid or list results | 30 days | Necessary |
fmf-theme | Remembers whether you chose the light or dark version of the site | 1 year | Necessary |
fmf_advertise_tier | Remembers which advertising package you were looking at while you sign up | 1 hour | Necessary |
PHPSESSID | Keeps your session together while you are filling in a form | Session | Necessary |
wordpress_logged_in_* | Keeps you signed in to your account | Session or 14 days | Necessary |
cmplz_* | Remembers your cookie choices so we stop asking | 1 year | Necessary |
_ga, _ga_* | Google Analytics — distinguishes visitors and sessions | Up to 2 years | Analytics |
burst_* | Our own visitor statistics, kept on our servers | Session | Analytics |
twk_*, TawkConnectionTime | Set by Tawk.to to keep a live chat conversation going, only after you click “Chat with us” | Varies, set by Tawk.to | Necessary for the chat you started |
__stripe_mid, __stripe_sid | Set by Stripe on the checkout pages only, to help prevent card fraud | Up to 1 year | Necessary |
| Cloudflare security cookies | May be set by our security provider when it needs to verify that a request is genuine | Short-lived | Necessary |
Necessary cookies are set because the site cannot work without them, and are not subject to consent. Everything in the analytics rows is set only if you accept. The live chat cookies are set only when you click “Chat with us”, because you have asked to start a chat.
9. Analytics and advertising
With your consent we use Google Analytics 4 to understand how people find and use the site — which pages are read, which searches are run, and where visitors come from. Google processes this on our behalf. We have IP anonymisation in effect and we do not use Analytics data to identify you personally.
We also use Burst Statistics, a visitor-counting tool that runs on our own servers and does not share data with anyone else.
We use Google Search Console to see which search terms bring people to the site. This reports on searches, not on individuals.
We have prepared the site to show advertising through Google AdSense in future. If and when advertising goes live, adverts will be served only where you have consented to advertising cookies, and this policy will be updated before that happens. Google’s own privacy notice for partner sites explains how it uses data from sites that show its adverts.
10. Who else processes your information
We use a small number of service providers to run the site. They act on our instructions, may only use your information for the purpose we engaged them for, and are bound by contracts requiring them to keep it secure. We do not sell your information, and we do not pass it on for anyone else’s marketing.
| Provider | What they do for us | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Stablepoint | Hosts the website and its database | United Kingdom |
| Cloudflare | Delivers the site and filters malicious traffic | Global, including USA |
| Brevo | Delivers our emails and newsletters | European Union |
| Stripe | Takes card payments for advertising | USA and Ireland |
| Analytics, Search Console, and advertising if introduced | Global, including USA | |
| Anthropic | Generates the answers given by our franchise assistant | USA |
| Tawk.to | Provides our live chat | USA |
Card details are entered directly into Stripe’s systems and are never stored on our servers. We see only the last four digits, the card type and whether a payment succeeded.
We will also disclose information where the law requires it — for example to a regulator or in response to a court order — and to our professional advisers where necessary. If the business is ever sold or transferred, personal information may transfer with it, and we would tell you first.
11. Transfers outside the UK
Some of our providers are based outside the United Kingdom, as the table in section 10 shows. Where information is transferred outside the UK, we make sure it is protected to an equivalent standard, by relying on UK adequacy regulations for the country concerned, on the UK extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, or on the International Data Transfer Agreement approved by the Information Commissioner.
You can ask us for details of the safeguards in place for any particular transfer.
12. How long we keep your information
We keep personal information only as long as we need it, then delete it or make it anonymous.
| Information | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Franchise enquiries | 3 years from the enquiry, then deleted |
| Account details | While the account is open, and 12 months after you close it |
| Support tickets and correspondence | 3 years from the last message |
| Newsletter subscriptions | Until you unsubscribe, then a suppression record indefinitely so we do not email you again |
| Payment and order records | 7 years, as tax law requires |
| Quiz and finder answers | 12 months |
| Franchise assistant conversations | 12 months from the last message |
| Live chat conversations | 3 years from the last message |
| Listing view and click statistics | 26 months, and never identifiable in any case |
| Email delivery, open and click records | 24 months |
| Website security logs | 12 months |
| Account activity and sign-in records | 12 months, then deleted |
Where a longer period is needed to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim, we keep the relevant records until that is resolved.
13. Your rights
Under UK data protection law you have the right to:
- Be told what we do with your information — which is what this policy is for.
- Get a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
- Have it corrected if it is wrong or incomplete.
- Have it deleted where we no longer have a good reason to keep it.
- Restrict how we use it while a question about it is resolved.
- Receive it in a portable form, or have it sent to another organisation, where we hold it on the basis of consent or a contract.
- Object to us using it for our legitimate interests, and to object to direct marketing at any time, which is an absolute right we will always honour.
- Withdraw consent at any time where consent is our basis. This does not affect anything done before you withdrew it.
To exercise any of these, email info@findmyfranchise.co.uk. There is no charge. We will respond within one month. If your request is complex, or you have made several, we can extend that by up to two further months, and we will tell you within the first month if we need to and why.
We may ask you to confirm your identity, so that we do not disclose your information to someone else, or to clarify what you are asking for. The time limit starts once we have what we need. When you ask for a copy of your information we will carry out a reasonable and proportionate search for it.
Remember that where you have enquired about a franchise, the brand holds its own copy — see section 6.
14. Marketing and how to opt out
We send marketing emails only to people who have asked for them, or to business contacts where the law allows it. Every marketing email has an unsubscribe link, which takes effect immediately.
Emails we send because you asked us to do something — confirming an enquiry, setting your password, receipting a payment, replying to a support ticket — are not marketing, and you will keep receiving those for as long as you use the service.
To stop all marketing, use the unsubscribe link in any marketing email, or email info@findmyfranchise.co.uk.
15. Keeping your information secure
The site is served over an encrypted connection, sits behind a firewall that filters malicious traffic, and forms are protected against automated abuse. Access to personal information is limited to those who need it to run the service, and administrator accounts are individually named. We keep a record of activity on signed-in accounts and of failed sign-in attempts (see section 3) so we can stop bots and rogue sign-in attempts.
No system is completely secure. If a breach occurs that is likely to put your rights at risk, we will tell you and the Information Commissioner’s Office as the law requires.
16. Children
This site is for adults researching business opportunities. It is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect information about anyone under 18. If you believe a child has given us their details, tell us and we will delete them.
17. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy as the site changes or the law does. The date at the top of this page shows when it was last revised. Where a change materially affects how we use your information, we will tell you directly rather than relying on you to notice.
18. Contact us, and how to complain
For anything to do with this policy or your information, email info@findmyfranchise.co.uk.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, you can complain to us by emailing info@findmyfranchise.co.uk with “Data protection complaint” in the subject line. We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days, look into it, keep you informed, and tell you the outcome without undue delay.
You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at any time, whether or not you have complained to us first:
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF
Helpline 0303 123 1113 — ico.org.uk
