Artificial Intelligence is redefining the dynamics of franchising, evolving from a simple technological tool into a strategic pillar. This is happening in Italy, it is happening in the United States, and it is happening according to approaches that are more similar than one might think, despite starting from very different market conditions.
What Emerges from the Italian Market
The 2026 Assofranchising Report paints a picture of a solid sector (€39 billion in turnover in 2025, up 8% from 2024), with 93% of operators expecting increased investment in AI and digitalization to optimize network efficiency.
The three key areas driving AI adoption are clear:
- Network expansion and predictive geomarketing: advanced geolocation, break-even analysis, and franchisee candidate selection based on historical performance data.
Operational efficiency: predictive logistics for inventory management, in-store computer vision to analyze queues and visual merchandising, and leaner formats enabled by centralized automation.
Hyper-personalization of marketing: generative AI for dynamic campaigns (with more than 78% of chains adopting it), omnichannel strategies, and automated 24/7 customer care.
The common thread: AI as a factor in contractual attractiveness. Franchisors that offer franchisees advanced data platforms are proving more resilient in the market; business formats built around human interaction—such as full-service restaurants, personal care, and fitness—are not being replaced, but enhanced.
What the U.S. Market Says
The picture emerging from the 2026 Franchising Economic Outlook by the IFA and FRANdata (based on a database of approximately 9,000 brands) confirms the same direction, with a few years’ head start in adoption and on a much larger scale: the sector now generates more than $907 billion in output, with projected growth of 1.6% in 2026 (exceeding $921 billion), 845,000 locations, and nearly 8.9 million employees.
Three elements distinguish the U.S. phase:
From “Siloed” AI to Agentic AI
In 2025, adoption focused on individual functions: lead generation, marketing, customer engagement, quality control, and workforce management. The expected leap in 2026 is toward agentic systems that can interpret data, make decisions, and autonomously coordinate workflows across the entire network, shifting franchisors from reactive to proactive management by anticipating performance gaps before they emerge.
A Significant Investment Gap
Large brands are building in-house AI capabilities, leveraging the scale of their data and capital; emerging and mid-sized brands, by contrast, are relying on third-party software platforms that are integrating AI into their technology stacks. This model lowers the barrier to entry but makes smaller brands more dependent on their technology providers. The lodging sector alone increased its AI investments by approximately 250% in 2025.
AI as an M&A Driver
The report highlights an acceleration of private equity activity in franchising, driven precisely by the sector’s predictable cash flows and its ability to scale technological infrastructure: brands with a strong technology stack attract capital more easily than those without one.
The Comparison: Same Direction, Different Speeds
The two snapshots tell the same story, but at different stages. The Italian market is currently going through the phase the U.S. experienced in 2024–2025: function-by-function adoption (geomarketing, logistics, CRM), driven more by the need for efficiency than by a vision of an integrated system. The U.S. market is already moving beyond this stage: the discussion has shifted to agentic AI, AI leadership at the C-suite level, and how automation is reshaping the relationship between franchisors and franchisees within development agreements.
There is, however, one common thread worth highlighting, because it is probably the most valuable lesson for those operating in Italy: in neither market is AI replacing sectors with a strong relational component. Full-service restaurants, personal care, fitness, and child-related services—both in the Assofranchising report and in the IFA/FRANdata report—remain among the most resilient growth sectors, precisely because AI is being used to free up time and provide data in support of human interaction, not to replace it.
For an Italian franchisor, the operational question that follows is no longer “whether” to invest in a data platform for its franchisees, but how quickly to do so before it becomes, as is already happening in the U.S., a criterion for franchisee selection itself.
Fonti: Rapporto Assofranchising Italia 2026 (Confcommercio Milano); 2026 Franchising Economic Outlook, International Franchise Association e FRANdata.