Michael Aronovici: Why More Locations Is Not the Win Franchising Thinks It Is

Montreal, Quebec, Canada – October 7, 2026 – Open the standard franchise playbook and the goal is almost always the same: add units, add them fast, and let scale do the rest. Growth gets measured in store counts and new territories signed. Few people stop to ask whether every one of those locations is actually making money for the person who signed the lease.

Michael Aronovici has spent more than 30 years inside that playbook, first as a franchisee himself and later as an owner and operator across several national brands. His view runs against the usual script: a brand with fewer, healthier locations is worth more than one with a longer list of addresses and a shakier franchisee base underneath it.

Why Aronovici Takes a Different View

As President and sole owner of Interaction Restaurants Group, Aronovici has built and sold businesses across pizza, coffee, fast casual and full service dining. In each case, the work that mattered most happened before any growth, not during it.

When Interaction acquired the Cultures restaurant chain, then a 60-location franchisor, the first task was not expansion. It was addressing financial challenges within the existing franchisee base and stabilizing operations that were already in place. Only after that work was the brand repositioned and sold, eventually becoming part of MTY Food Group.

Aronovici treats a weak unit, even a single one, as a problem that will not fix itself by adding ten more units around it. His experience with Pizza Hut in Quebec, where he held the development rights and became the brand’s largest franchisee in Canada, taught him that a decade of growth only holds up if each location is sound on its own terms.

Evidence From Salisbury House and Starbucks

The same thinking shaped his acquisition of Salisbury House, the Winnipeg restaurant chain with more than 70 years of history. Interaction did not try to multiply a legacy brand into new markets overnight. The 25-unit business was eventually sold to a local consortium, including musician Burton Cummings, with its regional identity intact rather than diluted by rapid expansion elsewhere.

His seven years developing and operating Starbucks Coffee in Eastern Canada make the point even more directly. Interaction held one of the very few licenses globally to introduce the brand into a market otherwise run by corporate-owned stores. That kind of trust is not built by chasing unit counts. It came from negotiating and expanding carefully enough that Starbucks Corporation bought the business back at a significant gain.

P.F. Chang’s followed a similar pattern in Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada. Aronovici introduced the brand to Canada and opened three restaurants before selling the business. Three locations, not thirty, was the right number for what the brand and the market could support at that stage.

What This Means for Operators Today

Aronovici’s advisory work over the past decade, with leading U.S. and Canadian restaurant and investment groups, keeps returning to the same questions. Is the margin on each unit improving or just getting diluted by volume? Is the supply chain built for the brand’s actual footprint, or stretched to support growth that has not been earned yet? Is the franchisee base financially sound, or carrying problems that a bigger store count will only magnify?

His board experience reinforces the same discipline. Fourteen years on the Board of the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association, including a term as Chairman, and a seat on the Board of the National Restaurant Association, put him in rooms where brand health and unit economics were constantly compared across very different companies. As an independent director of Prime Restaurants Inc., a multi-brand franchisor with more than 200 casual dining locations, he saw firsthand how uneven unit performance can sit underneath an impressive total count.

For operators weighing where to put the next dollar, Aronovici’s position is straightforward: fix what exists before adding what does not yet exist. A location count is easy to announce. A healthy franchisee base is harder to build, and it is the part that actually determines whether a brand is worth owning five years later.

To read more, visit the website here.

About Michael Aronovici

Michael Aronovici is President and sole owner of Interaction Restaurants Group, a restaurant, retail and franchise consulting, management and holding company. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Great Distinction) from McGill University and a CPA designation, and has served on the boards of the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association, the National Restaurant Association, Prime Restaurants Inc. and Meditrust Pharmacies.

Contact:

Info@michael-aronovici.com

Media Contact
Company Name: Michael Aronovici
Contact Person: Media Relations
Email: Send Email
Country: Canada
Website: michael-aronovici.com

Media gallery