Matt Stanton, Chief Development Officer at Hand & Stone Massage and Facial Spa, has been involved with franchising for nearly two decades. His experience spans the restaurant industry, retail services, fitness, and health and wellness.
We sat down with Matt to explore a topic that’s near and dear to his heart: incentive programs for military veterans. In Q1 of 2026, more than half of the franchise agreements he and Hand & Stone signed were with veterans, so we wanted to know: What’s the thinking behind the strategy? What’s so powerful about entrepreneurs who’ve served? How can the franchise industry create a welcoming environment for veterans?
Can you define what a military incentive program is at a high level? What do the programs generally look like in the franchise world? What are the goals? What do they offer?
Most brands who participate in military incentives offer veterans a small reduction on the upfront franchise fees. It’s a way to make the opportunity a little bit more accessible to show appreciation for their service to the country.
The other component is streamlining financing. Part of having a good military incentive structure is striking good relationships with the lenders who also understand the value of military veterans coming into the system and being good operators. Having some of those good relationships set up with the lenders to help facilitate veterans’ entry into the system is really important.
And then, beyond that, really the most important piece is your training program. You need to be able to take someone who is maybe straight out of the military or might have been working corporate for a short time, take them out of that setting, and transition them into entrepreneurship, into ownership. Being strong when it comes to training really resonates well with the veteran community because they understand the concept of applying yourself to increase skill. As they’re venturing into entrepreneurship for the very first time, they’re going to look for a partner who can sharpen their approach and help them get better.
From a CDO’s perspective what’s so valuable about military veterans as potential franchisees? Why are veterans and the franchise space such a good fit for each other in your mind?
That’s a great question because it’s just a natural fit.
Franchising with most brands out there, the whole idea is that there’s a proven model or system that operators leverage to do business. Within that system, there’s a great deal of ownership and different levels of flexibility, but the fact is, the best franchise owners are the ones who follow the proven system and trust the ways that the model has been set up. And our veterans are great at doing that. They’re able to take that proven framework, follow it very well, and execute it very well.
And then, when it comes to leadership and identifying priorities that require their individual attention, veterans usually excel at that too. So, it’s an opportunity to follow a system and apply those great team leadership characteristics that you have been honing throughout your service. When a franchisee understands how to lead operations effectively while upholding consistency across the system, that’s a great partnership.
So tell me a little bit specifically about what you do at Hand & Stone from a military incentives program perspective. What does it entail, and what are you especially proud of?
We offer best-in-class fee reduction for our veterans, which is a twenty percent discount off the initial fees. And then, like I mentioned, we have great relationships with lenders who really understand the power of supporting veteran entrepreneurs. Hand & Stone is a preferred brand for some of the major lenders who lend into the franchising space.
So, we’re able to help smoothen that financing journey as veterans get into the brand. We have a very good training program. We have very good tech tools. We have very good processes and procedures for all areas of our business. We’re able to lay that out and really show our veteran franchisees how they can come in, be successful with the brand, and apply their skillsets to business ownership, often for the first time, and be successful with that.
The fact is we provide a natural fit and offer what they’re looking for. We’re a proven brand with a very high success-to-failure ratio on a location-by-location level. We have a good national footprint of over 600 units with a proven model and plenty of whitespace left. Our average unit volumes are best-in-class, the highest by quite a bit over our direct competitors. We’ve just had steady, consistent growth for 20 years, and that keeps continuing.
In Q1 of this year, half your development deals were with veterans. Do you see veterans as a key part of the strategy moving forward?
Totally. Absolutely a key part. Will it always be fifty percent? That kind of ebbs and flows. Could be higher, could be lower from month to month.
There’s a snowball effect to it. As we get more veteran owners who have had a successful and positive experience with the brand and as veteran and franchise prospects are looking at the brand, they’re able to talk to veteran owners who can positively attest to aspects of the brand, the leadership, the systems and that, of course is a really critical part of getting someone comfortable with coming on board.
So it becomes this almost self-propelling machine going forward: as we get more successful veteran owners, that begets more veteran owners coming into the system.
An outsider might see “massage spa” and “military veteran” and not necessarily think that that those words go together. How have you created such a strong fit, and how do you try to communicate that in the space?
Our two modalities are massage and facial skincare; and when you think of a military veteran, those aren’t necessarily the first things that come to mind. Beyond the numbers stacking up right, it’s a great fit because we’re in the people business. Most franchises are, but we especially are in the people business.
We’re close one-on-one personal care. You’re interacting with the front desk staff if you’re a customer. You then interact with either your massage therapist or your esthetician who’s providing the service. So, it’s a very close person-to-person business. And so while your service team in any franchise business is important, it’s especially important in our business.
Think about us versus a QSR restaurant now. As a customer at a QSR, you might interact with another person minimally. You might order on a kiosk. You might step up to the counter and pick up your stuff. While it’s very important to have a good team running the operation of that business, there, there’s less kind of direct customer-staff interaction.
Not so in our business. Everything we do in our spa is direct interaction between the customer and service. So, having a great team who’s positive, who knows how to interact with people is key.
And so that team leadership component, while important in all franchise businesses, I would say is really what drives success or failure in our business. If you’re running a good team where it’s a positive culture, a positive environment, you have these professionals who are excited to be there and really eager to provide these services to the customers, that matters a ton. With our veterans coming in, a lot of them have great team leadership.
They’re able to address and identify problems with the team and quickly correct those and not let problems go on long, while supporting and understanding team needs and addressing those needs. So that’s where I think this fits so well. Veterans might not think, “Oh, massage and facial skincare!” but when you think about it, it’s team leadership and taking care of people. And a lot of military veterans, that’s embedded in their DNA, and they do a great job of that. So that’s why it fits.
And then the other thing I’d say too is it’s actually a pretty simple operation. When you get down to it, if you have good service providers who take care of the guests well, that’s the biggest piece of the puzzle. We have strong demand coming in. We need to make sure we have great service providers serving that demand and that all stays organized. And so that really allows the veteran operator to focus on their team, their training. “Are we following the right processes? Are we doing the right things?” So that low complexity allows them to focus on things like team and just running the business.
You’ve been in this space a while. You’ve seen good growth leaning into programs like this. What do you see being next? What could the future of military incentive programs and veteran-franchisor relationships look like? What could we do that would make the system even more powerful for both sides?
The thing I’ve thought about is sometimes our veteran outreach efforts are a little bit general, like, “Hey, we’re here. Feel free to reach out if you’re interested in learning more.” I’d love to see more direct on-ramp for any of those veterans who are retiring from the military. In my experience, when they retire, many veterans spend some time trying to figure where to take life next — maybe it takes a year, maybe it takes longer or less, depending on the situation. It would be great to provide a structured program to help them connect with a plan for their next phase instead of struggling with this “What do I do now?” gap.
I’d love to see a little bit more of a program where we and other brands can educate service people about franchise ownership and why franchise ownership could be a good option post-military. Help them explore the brands so that when they eventually do ramp down from the military, they have a clear path of exactly where they want to go in their next chapter as an entrpreneur. I’d love to see that kind of more direct action. I think that’d be great for everybody involved because it gives us a great pipeline of owners coming in, and it gives them a little bit more security. Like I’ve said from the beginning, it’s a natural fit.
