ADI is kind of an advertising marketing term. It stands for area of dominant influence. So ADI typically has to do with the coverage area of a radio station of a TV station so that what you want to know is within a certain area where TV advertising and radio advertising reaches potential consumers, how many stores are there, there? You care about that as a franchisee because you like to know if you have multiple franchisees with your flag, can contribute to an advertising fund and have enough money then in that fund to advertise why it is that they should be buying their soft serve at Dairy Queen rather than some place else, or why they should be buying their hunger busters at Dairy Queen rather a hamburger some place else.

And with a critical mass of stores, you have enough revenue available in the advertising fund to market in a way that will benefit you as a franchisee. If you’re out there all by yourself, you can’t afford to be funding television advertising and so that’s a problem. The second thing I would say about critical mass is this: You want to have fellow franchisees that you’re communicating with that are doing a good job, that they are giving their consumers a good experience.

We had a case once for a pancake franchisee down south, whose business was drying up because that particular franchise is the snowbirds, the folks from South Dakota and Minnesota were driving south, and they’d stop at a couple of locations, once or twice have bad experiences. They would not stop at our client’s location down in the southern part of the United States. And so not only do you want to have a certain number of franchisees in your particular area, or the lead interior, you also want your fellow franchisees doing a good job to keep the trademark recognized as being a good place to eat your pancakes or whatever the product happens to be.