Brian stood in his garage; he had finally bought the car he had dreamed of since he started driving. He was now the proud owner of a BMW Z3, just like the one James Bond drove in Golden Eye. Introduced in in 1994, it was the first mass production roadster in almost 20 years following the demise of the Triumph and MG two-seat British roadsters in the mid 1970’s. When he was 17, Brian had wanted to buy a friend’s TR3A, but his parents said no. He could still recall the feeling of driving that car; top down, so low to the ground, you could scrape your knuckles on the pavement. Now after many years of dreaming, he had his roadster.

When Brian’s 20-year-old son, Steven came home from school, he saw the car and said, “Wow – Now I need to learn to drive a stick shift”. Brian’s initial reaction was dread. Learning how to use a clutch is not easy – let it out too fast, and the car lurches forward and kills the engine. Too slow, and you run the risk of burning out the clutch. Furthermore, knowing when to shift gears was complicated. You had to watch or listen to the engine RPM’s to shift to the next gear, and hit the right spot each time you shift to a new gear. Downshifting was tricky too as it required balancing engine RPM’s and releasing the clutch correctly to achieve a smooth shift and to protect the transmission, clutch, and tires. Brian was not sure he had the patience to teach his son or that he wanted to subject his car to the wear/abuse while his son learned to master the manual transmission. However, he had an idea. “Maybe I can send him to driving school.” Brian started checking – do any driving schools offer manual transmission lessons and instruction? A few school scattered across the country did offer instruction, and of course there were the high performance driving schools (e.g., Ferrari), but none of the schools in his area offered manual transmission instruction. As Brian thought about it more, he wondered if this was a viable business idea.

But Brian is not a start-up guy; he has spent 20+ years in corporate America. As the Executive Vice President for Business Development at Drive-Right Driving Schools, his focus is on growing company revenue, and he wonders if manual transmission instruction should be one of the offerings of Drive-Right franchises to bring in more customers? Drive-Right is a national franchise with over 200 franchised outlets throughout the United States. The driving school industry is primarily small regional chains, and operators with 2-4 locations. Drive-Right is one of three national chains with 100+ outlets. Drive-Right sells franchises to local independent owners, who have the right to the Drive-Right trademark, instruction in the proprietary Drive-Right method to teach students to drive, and access to the back-office business system that helps the franchisee/operators run a profitable driving school. In exchange, the franchisees pay a franchisee fee of $10k plus a royalty of 5% of sales to Drive-Right, and agree to follow the rules and standards stated in their franchise contract. Drive-Right is a leader in driving school industry with high quality cars, well-trained staff, and a high licensing pass rate for their students. Not surprisingly, franchisees tend to have more invested in their local outlets than other brands but most Drive-Right franchisees earn an above industry average return in their outlets. Drive-Right has generally good relationships with their franchisees. In fact, many franchisees readily identify as themselves as “employees” of the Drive-Right brand. Brian’s experience is they behave much like the actual ‘employees of Drive-Right, with all the benefits and management challenges. A few years ago, Brian observed one of the new and fastest growing franchises was dry cleaning and laundry delivery service. Most of the franchises were sold to current dry cleaning business owners (about half of which are franchised) who signed up for the delivery franchise. Although it would have been possible for these dry cleaning business owners to create their own delivery system, many preferred the turnkey system, including routing software and discounted access to delivery vehicles offered by the franchisor. Brian did some initial investigation about manual transmission instruction. He discovered there were various ways to learn to drive a manual transmission from driving simulators ($75k+) to using manual transmission cars for behind the wheel instruction. He wasn’t sure which strategy to use. Brian will have to present his idea to Drive-Right’s executive board to get funding, and executive buy-in for the project. He has asked you to prepare the following: A business model canvas for the manual transmission instruction idea.