Business: FRANCHISING: NEW POWER FOR 500,000 SMALL BUSINESSMEN

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Franchisers have lately been reaching for other names as well. Country Singer Roger Miller is developing a string of King of the Road motels; Racing Driver A. J. Foyt is starting a franchised auto-repair operation. Television's Johnny Carson heads a new chain of restaurants called "Here's Johnny's." Now retired from baseball, Mickey Mantle devotes his time to myriad business interests, including a chain of franchised "country cookin'" restaurants. New York Jets Quarterback Joe Namath is chairman of a restaurant venture called Broadway Joe's that brought out a public stock issue this month even though it has opened only one outlet. Despite what he called "a rough night" at his Manhattan bar, Namath made a ceremonial 11 a.m. appearance at Chemical Bank New York Trust Co. to accept a $1,800,000 check for the underwriting proceeds. His own 145,000 shares in the venture have a paper value of $2,000,000.

Super Joe is only the latest promoter to discover the potential for instant riches in the stock market. Ponderosa System Inc., a successful Ohiobased steak-house chain, floated a public offering in February. Overnight, the 205,025-share holding of President W. James Kirst, which originally cost him $252,432, leaped in value to $5,125,625. Before Minnie Pearl's Chicken System —named after a star of Nashville's Grand Ole Opry—made a public offering last spring, directors and officers bought nearly 1,000,000 shares at 500 each. Grandly renamed Performance Systems, Inc., the chain has sold some 1,200 chicken franchises, is branching into transmission-repair services and child-care centers. Following a three-for-one split, the current stock price of $17.50 makes the management's original $500,000 stake worth about $50 million.

Applied to Anything. Franchising's growth possibilities seem boundless. John Galardi, 31, started out as a 500-an-hour counter boy in a Los Angeles tacos parlor a decade ago. He worked long hours, saved diligently and became a part owner, an investment that he has since parlayed into a chain of 50 Der Wienerschnitzel hot-dog stands and 190 other franchised outlets in 20 states. Today, Galardi puts his personal worth at "a couple of million." Over the past decade, Al Lapin Jr., 41, has built an investment of $25,000 into Los Angeles-based International Industries, a $40 million-a-year franchiser (pancake shops, business colleges, shirt stores). Last week Lapin agreed to pay $220 million in stock to acquire Ramada Inns, a chain of more than 200 motels. Like many an executive of conglomerate companies, Lapin takes pride in his ability to "put together a management package and apply it to any kind of service."

To Merle Levine, who has run one of Lapin's International Pancake Houses in downtown Los Angeles for three years, that package is a sound one. For a total investment of $65,000, Levine receives accounting, tax and marketing help as well as the use of International Pancake's name and advertising programs—and he earns over $20,000 a year. Other franchisees may need to invest as little as $300 to distribute disposable plastic aprons for the Poly Prim Plastic Corp. or as much as $1,000,000 or more for a Holiday Inns franchise.