From: abulloch@garnet.berkeley.edu (Anthony Bulloch)
Newsgroups: misc.entrepreneurs
Subject: Re: cheap franchise in weight loss service
Followup-To: misc.entrepreneurs
Date: 13 Aug 1992 07:16:27 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Distribution: na
NNTP-Posting-Host: garnet.berkeley.edu

In article <BstoxH.488@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> 
yjohn@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (John Ross) writes:
>
>I recently came across an ad for a franchise in Entrepreneur magazine and sent 
>for some information.  
>
>The franchise is run by Diet Guidance International, and for a $495 fee you
>become a Director if you qualify.  Directors have their own companies and sell
>diets to customers.  A customer fills out a form indicating his or her
>favourite foods and gives this and $49 (suggested) to the Director.  The
>Director sends the form and $12 to DGI, who produce a customized menu
>incorporating the favourite foods for 3 months of individual meals.  DGI then
>sends this off to the customer, imprinted with the name of the Director's
>company. 
>
>For the franchise fee you get an audio casette training program, an initial 
>supply of advertising brochures and some unspecified form of support from
>the company.
>
>This is outlined in a 15 page brochure.  To get more information you fill in a 
>biographical sketch and send it in (this is a thinly disguised ploy to 
>determine your current salary and whether or not you can put your hands on
>$500).  This gets you an audio cassette, a sample diet and a telephone 
>interview with someone at DGI--still no obligation.
>
>There probably is a market for this sort of thing, but a number of things 
>about the brochure disturbed me...........
>I wonder if they are selling franchises or the service.  Also, $500 is 
>probably below most people's comfort level, so if they do get burned they 
>would tend to just forget about it.  There is a lot of pressure in  the 
>brochure to apply quickly and an indication that only a limited number of 
>Directorships are available, but I'll bet they don't turn down many who have
>$500 available.
>
>Has anybody ever heard of this outfit (they are based in San Francisco)?  Does
>it sound interesting? Any comments?
>

I checked with the Better Business Bureau in SF today, and they
report that this company is a member of the BBB, and that their
file is in good standing with them. (They also add, of course,
that this does not constitute endorsement, or anything like
that.)   So they're real, and there have been no complaints
registered with the BBB.

That said, the sign-up fee does seem pretty steep, and the return
is low. (Don't forget you will have to advertise, too.)


One thing occurs to me.  If you are interested in the weight
management field (and this is a huge market now, and growing),
then there is another option you might consider.  There's a
new outfit called Interior Design Nutritionals which just
started last month: it specialises in a weight management
program and nutritional products aimed at the weight-loss,
weight maintenance, sports nutrition and longevity nutrition
markets. The program is based on research done at UCLA and
U Texas at Austin, the products are top notch and state of
the art technologically, and several things in the product
line were/are used by the US Olympics swimming, cycling
and sailing teams.  The cost to sign up with IDN is just $35 - a good
deal less than $500 - and for that you get more than with
Diet Guidance Int. (There's greater long-term potential, too,
since with IDN you can build your own group of distributors
and receive commission from the company based on your group's
sales volume.)   I have more info if you are interested.

Anthony Bulloch
abulloch@garnet.berkeley.edu

PS IDN has a personalized analysis of the kind offered by
Diet Guidance, and for the same kind of price: IDN's
analysis, and the recommended menus etc that you get, is
performed by the University of California at Los Angeles.
Also, IDN's program is strictly weight _management_ and
not Diet.