How a Lego franchise automated candidate qualification with Tallyfy

What does Bricks and MiniFigs do?

Bricks and MiniFigs is a franchise concept that has been around for just over a decade. We do aftermarket Lego businesses - retail stores where customers can buy, sell, and trade old Lego sets and bulk Lego they do not need anymore.

Customers come to us for things they cannot find anywhere else in person. You can get bulk Lego from us, used sets at lower prices, or retired sets that are not manufactured anymore. We also do birthday parties and events. The stores create big communities in their areas for Lego lovers to meet, build together, and create.

As a franchise, we help independent business owners open stores around the US and eventually internationally.

What is your role in the franchise development process?

I work on the franchise development team, which is the sales side of franchising. My job is coordination - managing documents and questions between candidates going through our qualification process to see if they can open a store.

I have a background in IT and cybersecurity. When I was hired, we looked at the existing process and started automating it, putting more power into candidates’ hands so they could get questions answered and access documents on demand.

We needed some kind of system that would give candidates a really good overview of where they are at in our process - what steps come next and exactly what they need to do.

What problem were you trying to solve?

Before Tallyfy, all of this was done by hand. That is what franchise coordinators traditionally do. A recruiter holds a meeting, then the coordinator types up a custom email saying “hope you enjoyed your meeting, here is what you need to do next, here are some available times, here is a document to fill out and email back.”

The only way to scale that would be to hire more people. I have a mind to avoid monotony and tedium when it can be automated. We took all that manual work and automated it.

How do candidates experience the process now?

When someone fills out a form on our website saying they want to learn about opening a store, they get a custom introductory email explaining what our process looks like. We tell them there is something called Tallyfy - we call it their process dashboard - and explain how it works.

They get assigned one item to begin: a welcome step. They click the link, Tallyfy opens, and it auto-opens that first task saying “welcome, here is how this works, click complete to move to the next step.” They practice the flow before getting real tasks like scheduling meetings or filling out questionnaires.

People really like how structured and straightforward it is. They kind of know what to expect.

Has anyone been overwhelmed by the system?

Honestly, it is almost like a good filter. The system requires some technical expertise. In the age we live in, there is a minimum technology savviness level required to run a business.

If someone gets overwhelmed by what is going on in Tallyfy, they are probably not comfortable with Slack or the Google suite either. Those are not the people we are looking for as franchisees. If there is any overwhelm, I have not really heard it.

How do you handle different requirements for different states?

We modularized the process. Instead of one process with 30 steps, we have step one as three or four tasks, and at the end of that section, it kicks off a second process.

That allows us to swap in different modules depending on which state people are looking at, because states have some unique franchise laws.

This modular architecture actually works really well. Even if the system created tasks on the fly rather than upfront, we would probably still use the modular approach because of the flexibility it gives us.

What is next for Tallyfy at Bricks and MiniFigs?

We are looking at other processes beyond franchise sales. Store onboarding once someone signs their agreement, franchise renewals, and store audits would all work well in an automated system like this.

Right now we are focused on increasing volume - how many people we meet with and how many stores we open per year. As we grow, we will need to move more internal processes into something structured like Tallyfy.

Would you recommend this approach to other franchise companies?

Absolutely. The client dashboard gives candidates a much better experience than endless email threads. They can see their progress, know what is coming next, and handle things on their own time.

For franchise development specifically, having that structured qualification process means we spend less time on coordination and more time actually evaluating whether someone would be a good franchisee.