Natural Disasters Significantly Impact Franchise Lead Generation
By: Michael Alston for Franchise Insights
January 14, 2025 – If your franchise sales team is noticing a decrease in lead generation in recent days, they are not alone. Despite a great start to the year, California is experiencing a significant drop in inquiries – down 21.3% through January 13, according to proprietary data from the Franchise Ventures lead generation platform of franchise investment inquiries in the United States.
Fires have devastated over 40,500 acres in California in the first thirteen days of 2025, compared to only three acres burned in the same period in 2024. The human suffering, displacement and property damage are staggering, and continue to mount as the fires burn and exacerbating weather approaches.
Accuweather estimates damages and economic losses exceeding $ 250 billion. Many lives have been lost, and livelihoods wrecked along with irreplaceable possessions. The economic impact will be felt far beyond the damaged acres, in California as well as the US economy. With the state having more than 39 million residents, or more than 11% of the US population, it is too early to know the full impact due to lost productivity and sales, somewhat offset by rebuilding costs.
Franchise Lead flow from the State of California is down 21.3% YTD already, since fires ignited on January 7.
The effect of such a disaster on franchise lead generation can already be seen. Looking at a large sample of lead flow by day by state, and comparing it to the same period in 2025, one can clearly see the impact in the chart above. Until the fire started the morning of Tuesday, January 7, lead flow in California was up a cumulative 9.5% for the year after a strong early start the first three days of the year and a typically slower weekend.
By this past Sunday, lead flow was down over 67% compared to the twelfth day of the prior year Friday, January 12 , 2024. Monday the 13th was down 36.4% from the same day in 2024.
Note that the measures of lead flow presented here are where prospects are searching to buy franchises, which in most cases is the prospect’s current state of residency.
Similar effects were seen from Hurricane Helene on lead generation in Georgia and North Carolina.
In our most recent look at migration of franchise interest among the states in November, we noted declines in Georgia and North Carolina which are historically higher-growth states. This was the first time that Georgia and North Carolina showed declines in our analysis, and Florida barely notched a gain. These declines are probably due in large part to the devastation and aftermath of Hurricane Helene. The storm made landfall in Florida on September 26, 2024, and cut a path of devastation and fatalities through Georgia and North Carolina.
Texas, gaining 0.55%, and California, losing 0.51%, had the two largest absolute changes in percentage share of franchise prospects among all 50 states year over year for Q3 2024. Fires burned over 720,000 acres in California in Q3 2024, but it is difficult to isolate that impact from the periodic decreases in relative franchise interest seen in that state since the pandemic began.
Eventually, the devastation will lead to regrowth as homes and businesses and livelihoods are rebuilt. As the weeks progress, we will have a clearer look at the larger impact. In the meantime, our hearts and prayers go to families who lost loved ones or homes, and the hundreds of thousands of people who were displaced by evacuation orders.
Franchise Ventures is the leading franchise lead-generation platform for potential franchisees to thousands of growing franchise systems in the United States and Canada. Its franchise lead generation brands include Franchise.com, Franchise Solutions, Franchise Gator, Franchise Opportunities, Franchise For Sale, SmallBusinessStartup.com and BusinessBroker.net, and together they provide the largest aggregation of prospective franchise buyers in the U.S.
Interested in more insights from our proprietary data set? Subscribe here to make sure you hear about them first.
Contact Franchise Ventures to get your share of today’s aspiring franchise owners.
Published on Tuesday, January 14th, 2025.