TurnoverTrace

Idea

TurnoverTrace catches every hourly worker who quits or gets let go at a multi-unit restaurant or retail franchise, texts them a short AI-conducted exit interview within 24 hours while the real reason is still fresh, and rolls the root causes up by location and manager. Franchise ownership groups running 3 to 50 units finally see the pattern behind their turnover instead of guessing at it every time a shift goes unfilled. It works over SMS, not an emailed survey link nobody who already quit will click.

Market gap

Small and mid-size multi-unit franchise operators (3 to 50 locations) in restaurant and retail run 70 to 130%+ annual hourly turnover, but the software available splits into three groups, none of which fit them.

Generic corporate exit-interview tools (ExitPro, SurveyMonkey, Quantum Workplace, PointerPro) integrate with BambooHR, Workday, ADP, and Gusto, and rely on an emailed survey link. That model is built for salaried, HRIS-tracked office staff. Hourly frontline workers who already left do not open a survey email.

Restaurant-native engagement tools like 7shifts Engage do the opposite job well: pulse surveys and sentiment tracking for employees who are still on the schedule, inside 7shifts' own scheduling ecosystem. The moment someone actually leaves, the product stops listening.

Enterprise frontline retention platforms like WorkStep are purpose-built and priced for warehouse, logistics, and manufacturing supply-chain employers, not restaurant and retail franchise groups.

Meanwhile RestaurantOwner.com, the trade association for independent restaurant operators, still hands its members a static PDF exit interview form as 2026 best practice. Timing: 2026 QSR turnover analyses put annual turnover above 130% and are explicitly calling on franchise systems to build real-time turnover and tenure dashboards for their franchisees. No accessible, self-serve product does that for the 3 to 50 unit operator today.

Total Addressable Market (TAM)

Bottom-up. FRANdata/Franchise Times data puts multi-unit franchise operators in the US at roughly 43,212, running about 223,213 units total, averaging about 5 units per operator. Restaurant, retail, and personal-service categories make up the large majority of hourly, high-turnover, multi-location franchise operators.

• TAM: a conservative addressable slice of 30,000 multi-unit franchise organizations (3+ locations, restaurant/retail/personal-service) at an average $150/month ($1,800/year) flat SaaS price scaled to unit count = 30,000 x $1,800 = $54M ARR.
• SAM: restaurant-sector multi-unit franchisees specifically, the largest and highest-turnover vertical, roughly 15,000 organizations x $1,800 = $27M ARR.
• SOM: a realistic 3-year target of 300 paying franchise groups (about 2% of SAM) x $1,800 = $540K ARR.

Assumptions: unit-count and operator-count figures from Franchise Times/FRANdata (source below). Pricing assumption is our own, anchored to the 3-tier pricing below.

Monetization strategy

Flat monthly SaaS subscription, paid by the franchise ownership group, tiered by number of active locations rather than by seat. Per-seat pricing would punish the business for the exact turnover the product exists to fix, so location count is the only billing lever. They keep paying because every month the dashboard shows a dollar figure for what turnover cost them, tied to a controllable action: a manager coaching conversation, a scheduling fix, a pay-band review. Phase 2 (out of scope for MVP): sell a franchisor-facing system-wide rollup as an add-on the franchisor can bundle for its whole network.

Pricing strategy

• Starter: $99/mo, up to 5 locations. Anchor tier, matching the average multi-unit franchisee's ~5 units.
• Growth: $249/mo, 6 to 20 locations.
• Portfolio: $499/mo, 21 to 50 locations, includes a franchisor-ready system-wide export.

Entry point is the free calculator below; there is no free tier of the product itself, since the value only shows up once real exit interviews start rolling in.

Lead magnet

A free, no-signup Turnover Cost Calculator and Sample Exit Interview. An owner enters headcount, average hourly wage, and monthly quits, and gets back their real dollar cost of turnover using industry-cited per-hire replacement cost ranges ($2,000 to $14,500+). From the same page they can trigger one live sample AI-conducted exit interview by text to their own phone, so they see the kind of root-cause answer it surfaces before they ever sign up.

Social proof that the problem exists

1. QSR Research Hub's 2026 labor article states QSR turnover rates exceeded 130% annually in many cases in 2025, and calls for franchise systems to build a real-time "front-line engagement dashboard" tracking turnover rate, tenure, and scheduling adherence for their franchisees, real-time intelligence that does not yet exist for this segment. https://qsrresearchhub.com/article/qsr-labor-staffing-2026/
2. Toast's own analysis of real restaurant exit interview data found employees mentioned "manager" almost twice as often as they mentioned pay as their reason for leaving, concrete evidence that exit data reveals actionable, non-obvious root causes when it is actually captured, which most small operators aren't doing systematically. https://pos.toasttab.com/blog/on-the-line/restaurant-staff-quit
3. RestaurantOwner.com, the leading trade association for independent restaurant operators, publishes a static, fillable PDF "Exit Interview Form Template" and a companion "Revolving Door" resource on managing turnover as its 2026 member guidance, direct evidence that no software has solved this for the independent and small-franchise segment. https://www.restaurantowner.com/public/Exit-Interview-Form-Template.cfm and https://www.restaurantowner.com/public/The-Revolving-Door-Managing-Employee-Turnover.cfm
4. 7shifts publicly cites its Engage product reducing restaurant turnover by 13% through pulse surveys of currently scheduled staff, confirming restaurant operators already pay for turnover-related tooling, while the product explicitly stops at active-employee sentiment and has no exit-specific capture. https://www.7shifts.com/blog/study-engage-employees-reduce-restaurant-turnover/

Competitors

• ExitPro: generic corporate exit-interview SaaS. Integrates with BambooHR, Workday, ADP, Gusto, SAP SuccessFactors. Priced $79 to $249/mo billed quarterly plus a custom enterprise tier. Survey-link based, not SMS-native, not scheduling/POS-triggered, no restaurant/retail root-cause taxonomy or multi-location franchise rollup.
• 7shifts (Engage): the dominant restaurant scheduling platform's built-in engagement layer. Pulse surveys and an engagement leaderboard for currently scheduled staff, inside 7shifts' own ecosystem only. No dedicated exit-interview or post-departure product.
• WorkStep: AI-powered frontline retention platform, but purpose-built and priced for warehouse, manufacturing, and transportation employers in supply chain, not restaurant or retail franchise operators.
• SurveyMonkey, Quantum Workplace, PointerPro, ProProfs Survey Maker: general-purpose survey or broader employee-listening tools with an exit-interview template, not a restaurant/retail-specific product.

What competitors offer now

Static or emailed survey links an HR admin has to remember to send, built around HRIS systems (BambooHR, Workday, ADP) that most 3 to 20 unit franchise groups don't run, since they usually just use a payroll processor and a scheduling app, not a full HRIS. Sentiment tools that watch employees closely while they're still on the schedule, then go silent the day they quit, since that departure event isn't wired to anything. Enterprise contracts and integration lift (WorkStep) that assume a company already has dedicated HR/IT resources most small multi-unit operators don't have.

What can be done differently to attract customers

Trigger automatically off a "someone left" event pushed from whatever scheduling tool the franchisee already runs (7shifts, Homebase, Toast, When I Work, Square) through a simple CSV upload or generic webhook, not a heavy EDI-style integration. Text, don't email, the departing hourly worker a short AI-conducted conversation within 24 to 48 hours, while they're candid and have nothing left to lose. Bucket every transcript into a fixed restaurant/retail-specific root-cause taxonomy and roll it up by location and by manager on one dashboard. Price it flat by location tier so a 3 to 10 unit franchisee can afford it on day one, instead of needing an enterprise sales call. Lead with the free Turnover Cost Calculator so an owner sees their own number before they ever talk to anyone.