The Economist Just Validated What Smart Investors Already Know: Franchising Is the Future, and in an age of artificial intelligence, the most valuable businesses are the ones AI simply cannot replace.

When Greg Flynn graduated from Stanford Business School in 1994, his classmates were chasing the dotcom boom, crafting PowerPoint decks and dreaming of stock options. Flynn went a different direction. He helped a friend open a second restaurant. Then he bought eight Applebee's of his own.

Decades later, Flynn runs more than 3,000 franchise outlets across seven brands in three countries and is reportedly worth more than a billion dollars, making him likely the first franchisee in history to reach that milestone. The International Franchise Association recently inducted him into its Hall of Fame, an honor previously reserved for the innovators who built the brands themselves, people like Ray Kroc and Colonel Sanders. 

The Economist noticed. In a May 2026 feature, the magazine called franchising the purest distillation of the American dream. It was the kind of editorial attention that an entire industry had been quietly earning for decades, and it arrives at a fascinating moment: just as artificial intelligence is reordering the economy and sending a new generation of entrepreneurs searching for businesses that are human by design and impossible to automate away.

For MiniLuxe, that moment feels less like news and more like confirmation of something Tony Tjan has believed since the very beginning. 

The Economist's essay is remarkable not because it reveals something hidden, but because it names something that has been hiding in plain sight for years. There are now close to 850,000 franchise establishments in the United States, run by roughly 250,000 owners, employing approximately nine million people and generating about 3% of GDP. 

These are not fast food statistics alone. The franchise model has been spreading into new categories, including boutique fitness, home services, and child care, thanks in part to private equity investors who have become enthusiastic franchisors. The brands doing the most interesting work right now are not the ones selling burgers. They are the ones selling experiences, relationships, and services that require a human being in the room. 

The IFA predicts there will be 845,000 franchised businesses in the U.S. by the end of 2026, employing nearly nine million people and producing more than $920 billion in economic output. And the people building these businesses look nothing like the stereotype. 64% of franchisees are first-time business owners, and 30% say they would not own a business at all without franchising. This is not a model for insiders. It is a model for people who want a proven path into entrepreneurship without starting from zero. 

Tony Tjan, co-founder and CEO of MiniLuxe, understood this long before The Economist put it into words. "The biggest lesson we have learned with our MiniLuxe studio business is that performance is directly correlated with having the right leader in any given store location. Franchising is one of the best vehicles we know that can scale localized entrepreneurship in a capital-efficient manner," Tjan has said. That insight is not a business strategy in isolation. It is a philosophy about people, and it runs through everything MiniLuxe has built. 

Here is the counterintuitive truth at the center of this moment: the rise of artificial intelligence is not a threat to service franchises. It is their most powerful marketing argument.

Matt Haller, who leads the International Franchise Association, points to rising tuition costs and the emergence of AI as forces that have prompted renewed interest in the trades and other more human ways to make a living. In-person businesses look like a safer bet now. "There's really not a franchise that you can run without people," Haller told The Economist.

Tjan has been making this argument in the nail care context for years. "There is no other industry that employs as many hourly trade workers and trade women workers as nail care, outside of domestic cleaning," he has said. That fact, often overlooked, is exactly the reason nail care is so resilient. It is not a business that scales through automation. It scales through people, through training, through standards, through culture. 

Think about what that means for a nail studio. A computer can write code. It can generate images and draft contracts. What it cannot do is hold someone's hand, perfect a gel application, read the room in a beautifully designed studio, or build the kind of trust that turns a first-time client into a loyal regular. The skills that define a great nail designer, the precision, the artistry, the warmth, the eye for color and proportion, are exactly the skills that no algorithm will replicate.

This is why the nail care industry is not shrinking in the age of AI. It is growing. 

What separates MiniLuxe from the broader wave of franchise enthusiasm is a distinction worth understanding carefully. MiniLuxe has invested deeply in technology, but the purpose of that investment is not to replace the human experience. It is to protect and amplify it.

Tjan has spoken openly about MiniLuxe's early partnership with Zenoti to build technology platforms designed from the ground up for the salon experience, noting that "we've been fortunate from the earliest days to work with them in partnership on product development for us, and by extension, I think, for others in the industry." The technology infrastructure MiniLuxe has built allows franchise partners to operate with a level of consistency, efficiency, and visibility that would be impossible to achieve independently. 

This is also what makes MiniLuxe's model fundamentally different from the fragmented, independent salon industry it is working to transform. The average independent nail salon operates without standardized hygiene protocols, without career development infrastructure for its technicians, without brand equity, and without the operational backbone that allows for consistent growth. MiniLuxe brings all of that. Technology makes it scalable. People make it real.

Tjan has described the larger purpose behind franchising at MiniLuxe this way: "We have always believed that our brand has been a platform for empowerment. Our own nail designers have a system where they can continue to gain economic empowerment and creative empowerment. Our vision is to create the first set of mani-millionaires, as we internally call it." That is not franchise language. That is a mission statement built around the dignity of work, and it is rare. 

The most compelling proof of MiniLuxe's model is not found in projections. It is found in the people who have chosen to build with it.

When MiniLuxe announced its inaugural franchise partner, Quynh Pham, a Boston-based serial entrepreneur who emigrated from Vietnam and built successful real estate and retail enterprises, Tjan described the partnership in terms that said everything about how MiniLuxe thinks about franchise relationships: "She and her husband, Brad, truly represent the best spirit of the 'American Dream' and are an inspiration to their community and beyond." 

Pham herself had been a longtime MiniLuxe client before becoming its first franchise partner, and her decision was rooted in conviction. "I have been a long-standing MiniLuxe customer and wanted to be the first to franchise the MiniLuxe brand. I believe that MiniLuxe truly holds the potential to transform our industry." 

MiniLuxe's second franchise partner, Peiru Kim, brought a different but equally compelling story. The founder of Sugarcoat, a modern nail care brand in Atlanta, Kim had first worked alongside MiniLuxe through a joint venture before committing to a franchise agreement for MiniLuxe's first Florida studio in Tampa. "I am passionate about advancing the clean beauty movement and I am committed to delivering exceptional experiences to our Tampa clientele. With MiniLuxe's innovative approach and strong brand foundation, I look forward to growing our presence in the region," Kim said. Tjan, for his part, characterized what the Atlanta collaboration had demonstrated: "Our collaboration with Peiru in Atlanta demonstrated the power of shared vision and values and what can be achieved when we decentralize entrepreneurship." 

And then there is Vera Lexmond, MiniLuxe's third multi-unit franchise developer, who signed a three-location development agreement to bring MiniLuxe to Fairfield County, Connecticut. Lexmond built a successful multi-unit retail career in the Netherlands before becoming a founding team member behind Enstall, a global leader in smart electrical installation systems ultimately acquired by Blackstone. Her reason for joining MiniLuxe was direct. "MiniLuxe represents everything I believe the beauty industry should stand for, ethical products and services, high standards, and profit with integrity. My professional career has been focused on building purpose-driven brands and values-aligned teams. I'm thrilled to bring MiniLuxe to my community in Connecticut and to be part of this movement." 

Tjan's response to Lexmond's partnership captured the geographic and strategic logic MiniLuxe is building toward: "Her track record as a proven operator, entrepreneurial spirit, and her understanding of marketing and brand make her an ideal steward of MiniLuxe's next phase of growth. Fairfield County is a natural extension of our New England presence." 

Three franchise partners. Three different backgrounds. Three different markets. One shared conviction that this brand is worth building. 

Franchisee owners are now reporting growing interest from their children in succession plans, a signal that a generation raised during a period of AI disruption is reconsidering the value of owning a tangible, community-rooted business. The idea of owning something real, something embedded in a neighborhood, something that serves people face-to-face, has taken on a new kind of appeal. 

85% of franchisees live and work in the communities they serve, and 83% gave to local charities in the past year. Franchise ownership, at its best, is an act of community investment. MiniLuxe partners understand this instinctively. 

Tjan has framed the ambition in appropriately large terms. "I think we still have a long ways to go. I think we are still a relatively small drop in the ocean of nail care. When you think there's 65,000 places to get your nails done, and we're beginning franchising, we can see ourselves having thousands over the next several years of MiniLuxe." The opportunity is not incremental. It is generational. 

And MiniLuxe approaches it with a discipline that is worth noting. Tjan has described the company's operating philosophy this way: "Our plans have always been to think big, start small, then scale appropriately fast. You have to nail it before you scale it." That is the kind of patience that produces brands that last. 

If you are curious about what a MiniLuxe franchise partnership looks like, we invite you to start a conversation. The future of nail care is being built right now, and the people building it are entrepreneurs who understand that some of the best investments in an AI-driven world are the ones that keep humans at the center.