Franchise Program Director

Company Description Lune Spark Center for Creativity is a three-location (Apex, Chapel Hill, Holly Springs, NC) creativity and arts brand serving ages 5–adult across visual art, filmmaking, music, digital/animation, dance, personal development, and more. We are now ready to scale beyond the Triangle through a franchise model — and we are hiring the one leader who will own that from day one. To get the system right from day one, Lune Spark has partnered with iFranchise Group — the industry's leading franchise consulting firm — to design our franchise program. The Franchise Program Director will work directly with some of iFranchise's most senior leaders as thought partners while owning execution end-to-end at Lune Spark.

Role Description The Franchise Program Director will single-handedly lead Lune Spark's franchise business — strategy, recruiting, selection, onboarding, training, and ongoing franchisee success. You will be the operator who turns a strong local brand into a national franchise system. This is a build-it, own-it role reporting directly to the CEO. You will set the sales targets, write the playbooks, run the discovery days, train the franchisees, and be the single point of accountability for the growth and health of the franchise portfolio. In the first 18 months, your north star is signing the first cohort of franchisees and getting them open, profitable, and brandaligned.

What you will own

• Franchise sales strategy — define target markets, candidate profile, and unit-economics pitch; set annual and quarterly signing goals.

• Pipeline development — generate and qualify franchise leads through digital marketing, broker networks, industry events, and direct outreach; respond to all inbound inquiries within 24 hours.

• Candidate selection — run discovery calls, financial qualification, Discovery Days, and the full validation process; make the final go/no-go recommendation to the CEO.

• Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) ownership — maintain the FDD with legal counsel; keep registration current in every state we sell in; ensure every disclosure obligation is met.

• Franchise agreement execution — negotiate territory, fees, and timelines; coordinate with legal to close deals cleanly.

• Onboarding and training — design and run new-franchisee training (operations, programming, hiring, marketing, technology stack); own the certification bar.

• Grand opening support — guide each new franchisee through site selection, build-out, staffing, launch marketing, and first-90-days operations.

• Franchisee success — build the field-support model (visits, calls, scorecards); monitor franchisee P&L, student growth, and brand compliance; intervene early when a unit is off-track.

• Brand standards — define, document, and enforce operating standards; protect the Lune Spark experience in every location.

• Marketing partnership — work with marketing to produce the franchise-sales site, collateral, discovery-day materials, and the national-brand playbook franchisees will execute locally.

• Financial accountability — own franchise P&L: initial fees, royalties, marketing fund, growth KPIs; report monthly to the CEO and board.

• Multi-unit and area development — build the framework for multi-unit operators and regional developers once the first cohort validates the model.

Qualifications

• 10+ years total professional experience, with at least 5 years in franchise development, multi-unit growth, or scaling a consumer or service brand from early-stage into a repeatable system.

• You have personally closed franchise agreements, or you have led a franchise-adjacent growth role (multi-unit area development, licensee program, dealer network) and are ready to run the whole program.

• You understand FDDs, state registration, Item 19 math, royalty structures, and the FTC Franchise Rule well enough to work with counsel without being led by them.

• You can sell. You can also build the thing you are selling — the training deck, the discovery day, the operations manual, the onboarding checklist.

• You are comfortable being the only person doing this at the company for the first 12–18 months, and you have the judgment to decide what to build next versus what to leave for later.

• You care about the product. Lune Spark exists to help kids and adults discover who they are through creativity; a candidate who treats this as units-and-royalties will not succeed here.

• Bachelor's degree required; MBA or equivalent operating experience a plus.

• CFE (Certified Franchise Executive) designation a strong plus.

Pay

$120,000.00 - $200,000.00 per year

Base: $80,000 - 110,000 + 50%-100% incentive/variable