When would-be entrepreneurs think about starting a business, one of the biggest hurdles of getting started is the financial risk often required to make it happen. Take opening a restaurant franchise for example, it’s not uncommon to invest $1 – $2 million dollars to start the business. If the restaurant doesn’t work out, the entrepreneurs lifetime savings could be eviscerated in a few years. That’s a whole lot of pressure to make a business work!

But opening a franchise business doesn’t need to be high stress. There are a small number of opportunities you can join for an investment of $1,000 or less. Some of the options listed below are franchise opportunities while other are direct sales or small business opportunities. Either way, these opportunities allow anyone that wants to take a shot at operating a business is eligible without a major financial risk.

Whether you’re on a budget or don’t want to risk your entire net worth to try an unproven business idea, these franchise businesses can help you open for business on the cheap. I’ve organized these low-cost options by category so you can find the opportunity that best matches your interests. Let’s take a look. 

Cheap Food / Restaurant Franchises under $1k

If you’re passionate about cooking or food businesses, take a look at these opportunities. 

OrdersIn

• Initial Investment: $149 – $1,500 (depending on the subscription plan of your choice)
• Franchise Fee: N/A

OrdersIn is ideal for entrepreneurs that want to help local restaurants deliver their food to customers. With this cloud-based business, you don’t need any experience to make money. That’s because OrdersIn offers franchisees with an easy solution to help provide a straightforward online platform where food establishments can upload a menu for their customers to look at and order.

With this concept, you get white-label rights to an ordering app. It will be up to you to find restauranteurs to join your local platform and sign up to accept orders through the app. In the early days, you’ll be hitting the pavement to talk to restaurant owners across the city that don’t already offer delivery. Some restaurants can double or triple revenue by adding the delivery sales channel so this is an appealing value proposition. 

In addition, OrdersIn enables you to run your business from the comfort of your own home. The company ensures that your business and revenue remains. The OrdersIn company logo won’t appear on your site or inside the app., OrdersIn also doesn’t take percentage or commissions. This allows licensees to average thousands of dollars per month in passive income once they get the platform up and running.

To top it all off, once you start with OrdersIn, they help you get going. The company will provide support to you throughout your entrepreneurship journey. They do this by taking care of the technical aspect of operating an ordering app, including security, hosting, uptime, and maintenance, so that you can focus on things on your end. Plus, they also provide sales training and one-on-one support.

Healthy Hands Cooking

• Initial Investment: $497 – $1,000
• Franchise Fee: N/A

Interested in starting a cooking business from the comfort of your home? Then Healthy Hands Cooking is the perfect partner for you. This company empowers moms, dads, sons, daughters, regular joe’s, start a home-based cooking school 24/7. In essence, Healthy Hands Cooking is a patent pending online training program where you can learn everything you need to know to become a certified cooking instructor. Speaking of, you will learn from nutrition grads, wellness advocates, fellow home cooks, teachers, mothers, fathers, and entrepreneurs passionate about creating jaw-dropping dishes.

Their online training program includes 11 modules that will help you get started on your new cooking business. With Healthy Hands Cooking, you will learn about proper background checks, licensing, marketing, food safety, permits, and so much more. This goes to show that this platform is more than just a certification program. They provide you with proven ways to help you become successful.

On top of all that, this company also provides you with a simple software where you can manage everything with ease. Clearly, Healthy Hands Cooking has refined their processes to ensure that you have an enjoyable experience while keeping a full time or part time job.

Service Franchises under $1k

 Planning to put a little hard work into your business? The home service industry is expected to grow by 18.91% through 2026. This industry covers a wide-range of services from home repair, house cleaning, lawn care, plumbing, painting, moving, and more. 

Cleanout Foreclosures

• Initial Investment: $349
• Franchise Fee: N/A

If you’re looking for a business venture with a little more “put your back into it” method, then Cleanout Foreclosures is for you. This company offers you a way to make some money through cleaning out and maintaining foreclosed buildings or structures. As you might imagine, homes that have been foreclosed on can be dirty when the occupants leave the property. Your job is to come in and clean it up before the property is rented or sold to a new owner. 

Once you’ve paid your startup fees, the company will send you a 210-page startup manual and a forms CD. Essentially, the manual includes everything you need, including fill-in forms, such as bidding documents, customer notifications, worker checklists, marketing information sheet, and more. With the CD, you can simply input it to your computer and make digital copies of each form, so that it’s easier for you to fill in your information.

All you need now is equipment, which can already be found lying around your garage. This includes a digital camera, computer with internet access, a truck or access to one or another type of vehicle where you can bring the tools you need for the job site. You’ll also need cleaning supplies like mops, soaps, buckets, shop vacumm and a pressure washer. 

Cleanout Foreclosures also help you get the support you need when you’re just getting started. They provide you with more than enough contact information of local realtors and brokers that are within your vicinity that sell foreclosures. On top of that, the company provides you with regional and national services, which include lenders, big banks, for government agencies, and all companies that perform maintenance.

All-in-all, you can start this business full time or part time on weekends. Plus, you can run this business out of the home since it only requires a small amount of office space and storage space like a garage where you can keep cleaning supplies. Sky’s the limit for this business. This is also a recession resistant franchise business model where you could actually make more money during an economic downturn as people unfortunately lose their homes. 

Green Irene

• Initial Investment: $150
• Franchise Fee: $150

If you’re more inclined to start a business that’s all about improving the environment, the company Green Irene  shares this mission. The company is an American Eco-Consultant that operates franchises with green initiatives. Green Irene has grown a lot over the past few years that it is now the largest green consulting firm in the United States. As a matter of fact, the company now has more than 650 independent Eco-Consultants in 48 states.

One key advantage of owning a Green Irene is that you can work from home. Aside from offering consulting services these independent distributors offer hundreds of the company’s highly recommended green office and home products. If you decide to join Green Irene, the company follows a direct sales model, enabling you to earn a professional income while doing work you can be proud of. 

With Green Irene, rest assured you’ll be provided with training to help lay down the foundation. That said, the company will provide you with a web based video that you can complete within a 24 hour period, but you are free to go at your own pace for the training.

Aside from the initial training, they’ll be providing you with the proper tools, brand name, products, leads, materials and appointments that you need in order to establish a highly profitable business.

SongsWithMyName

• Initial Investment: $500
• Franchise Fee: $500

Want to operate a business that brings joy to customers? The personalized music is a unique industry that’s been on an uptrends the past half-decade. With this business, you’ll provide personalized music songs that include a loved ones name in the known song. This is a unique way to surprise someone for their birthday, graduation, or any other major celebration. 

Songs are played by a professional recording artist whose voice your customers will instantly recognize. Kids love the album and both parents and grandparents are quite happy to see their enthusiastic reaction whenever a song is played.

To top it all off, recipients can enjoy the CD at home or in the car. And, of course, the content of the CD can be used on any digital device that you have available, provided that it has a CD player. These CDs are an ideal gift for young and old. And, seeing the facial expressions when a favorite character sings their name is absolutely priceless.

Is franchising in your future?

Motiply

• Initial Investment: $149
• Franchise Fee: N/A

Want to break into the digital marketing business? Budding entrepreneurs are always looking for ways to sell their products and/or services online. That’s where Motiply comes into play. With this platform, you are able to create high functioning mobile apps and websites for companies, clients and entrepreneurs of your choosing. Moreover, Motiply will help you earn recurring monthly payments by selling top value websites and mobile apps to other companies.

In relation to what we said above, due to the explosive growth of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets are in greater demand than ever before. Large companies invested millions in designing mobile websites and apps. Now, you can bring this technology to small businesses at an affordable rate. 

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With the help of the provided training and tools given to you at your disposal, you’ll be selling mobile websites and apps to companies within a few days. You can start generating regular payments in just a matter of weeks after signing onto the program. If you’ve got experience with sales this could be a good match for your skillset. 

EZ Backdrops

• Initial Investment: $995
• Franchise Fee: N/A

In its most basic sense, EZ Backdrops offers exactly what their name entails, providing top notch backdrops for any event or occasion. Plus, the company claims that this product is the only backdrop that is truly “EZ”, which means you won’t have a difficult time setting it up and taking it down. This could be a really interesting business to consider now that we are hopefully moving out of the health crisis. 

The fabric offered by EZ Backdrops are manufactured in such a way that’s fire retardant, high density, and wrinkle resistant that are far superior compared to other products. On top of that, backdrops come with every color infused through a fabric dye process. Now, this isn’t your typical inkjet print on fabric process. This company makes use of a process where the colors are infused into the fabric producing eye-popping graphics. This ensures that your backdrop remains brand new even after multiple shows.

When it comes to the actual setup, you won’t need to lug around poles or any sort of framework anymore. This is an interesting business concept that’s positioned well to serve the live events industry, weddings, and concerts. 

Clean & Happy Windows

• Initial Investment: $500 – $2,000
• Franchise Fee: $10,000

Unlike opening a restaurant or a novelty shop, cleaning services are an essential industry operating in every market of the world. In whatever season there is, windows will always eventually get dirty. Moss and grime grows as the gutters start filling up. If you’re looking for a franchise opportunity that’s a little more hands on, then Clean & Happy Windows is the business for you.

Clean & Happy Windows is a company that has been around for over 29 years, servicing Seattle and the greater parts of Puget Sound in the state of Washington. Since then, they have constantly developed their business model, so that the overhead remains low and your profits high. On top of its tested and proven business model, Clean & Happy Windows also provides a tremendous amount of training to get you started. The company also promises continual support to help your business grow.

All in all, Clean & Happy Windows caters to the needs of small commercial and residential building needs. Rest assured that there will always be a constant stream of potential customers of commercial and residential properties in need of your services. 

Grave Groomers

• Initial Investment: $100 or $2,000 (both have a recurring payment of $100 per month for succeeding months)
• Franchise Fee: N/A

Reading the name of this company, you might already get the grasp of what it does. Grave Groomers is a service business that takes care of grave stones and surrounding areas. Should you decide to be part of their team, you will become part of one of the most respected cemetery care businesses in the United States. Another benefit when you start with Grave Groomers is you will be listed on the company’s top ranking website. Nowadays, most people search for everything on the internet. If your company is not one of the top search results on Google, then it would greatly decrease your chances of gaining web traffic. With that in mind, being part of Grave Groomers ensures that you will have many customers.

Now, Grave Groomers offers two options for potential franchisees. The first option is Beautification location, which allows you to provide clients with the company’s beautification services, including basic stone cleaning, flower bouquets, photos and videos, holiday wreaths, and other grave care.

The second option is Restoration and Beautification, which not only enables you to provide beautification services, but restoration services, as well. However, should you decide to choose this option, you will need to go to Grave Groomers’ main office at Saint Paul, Minnesota to receive proper training. The training itself will only last for a weekend during spring up to the last day of fall.

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Blueprint

• Initial Investment: $1,000
• Franchise Fee: N/A

Have you ever dreamed of being financially free or free from the clutches of time? Did you always just want to have more breathing room at the end of the month? Have you always wanted to stop worrying about the bills? Have you always wanted to go on trips with your loved ones and not worry about work? Well, with Blueprint, you can achieve all that and more!

However, most people  assume that such a lifestyle is out of reach. But this franchise is trying to tell you that it is more reachable than what most would think. With Blueprint, if you have ever wanted to sell a top-notch digital product that teaches you how to market online, generate leads online, or keep your mind focused on the job at hand, then this franchise will teach you all you need to know to do all those and much more.

The opportunities with Blueprint are endless; even if you have no skills in marketing or sales, this company will help you discover a chance to replace your full time income with an online and  home based business.

Travel Franchises under $1k

Traveling is a fun and enjoyable experience for everyone. But, it can also be a lucrative business opportunity. Here are some fantastic travel franchise opportunities for you.

Cruises Inc.

• Initial Investment: $249
• Franchise Fee: N/A

If you plan on making vacations your business, then this franchise is definitely for you. Cruises Inc. is already recognized as one of the best travel host agencies across the U.S. – if not the best. This company is part of World Travel Holdings and has been around since 1982. Today, it is now the largest cruise vacation seller in the world. If you decide to become part of Cruises Inc., you’ll have peace of mind, knowing that you are joining the best in the industry.

When you join Cruises Inc., you instantly become part of the World Travel Holdings (WTH) family, which is the largest retailer of cruise travel. Together with them, you will be able to create award-winning marketing programs, superb travel supplier relationships, and a fantastic support model that will provide you the tools for success. On top of that, one major advantage that Cruises Inc. offers is you get to keep 100% of your commissions on the sales of vacation packages! Moreover, you can do it in your home and you can do it in your free time.

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Once you become a member, the company will provide you with an in-depth training program, including 20 hours of training modules, virtual training, Saturday-Series virtual training, and more. Not only that, they will also provide you with a dedicated agent support team that is available 6 days a week.

World Discovery Club Global

• Initial Investment: $497 – $19,997
• Franchise Fee: N/A

World Discovery Club Global provides potential franchisees with an easy solution to tap into an $8 trillion industry. With this franchise, you are able to receive a straightforward turnkey solution to help you get up and running as fast as possible. When you become part of their company, you’ll be able to help your customers book hotels, cruises, airline tickets, and package tours from thousands of websites.

With this job, you will be able to choose between working full time and part time. Aside from that, you will also be highly compensated, earning a commission of 30% from all sales. This allows you to reach 6 figures within your first year alone. In terms of support, you will also receive a step-by-step guide, which reveals what you should do and how to do it. Additionally, training videos are on-demand, so that you can watch and learn when you’re free to do so.

Their team also takes care of the advertising, which generates a ton of targeted traffic and delivers it directly to your very own marketing system. Plus, World Discovery Club Global’s account executives are there to help you follow up clients to close sales.

Tix Travel & Ticket Agency

• Initial Investment: $995
• Franchise Fee: N/A

Like planning other peoples travel to sporting events? Yet another franchise that sells travel and leisure is Tix Travel & Ticket Agency. One thing that sets them apart is that they cater to those that are looking for tickets for sport events like basketball or football games. With that said, you can come up with unique packages that fuses sporting or other entertainment events with transportation and hotel accommodations. This franchise enables you to become a valuable resource to both businesses and fans that are looking for a combination of tickets and travel.

Tix Travel & Ticket Agency has been around since 1983 and earned a reputation as one of the best. To start off, you don’t need any experience before you begin your journey with the company. They will provide you with a complete online training program that is quite in-depth. Plus, Tix Travel & Ticket Agency offers live support as well as a mentoring program to ensure your skills remain sharp.

When it comes to lead generation, the company will send leads from their website and call center directly to you. In short, Tix Travel & Ticket Agency will provide you with everything that you need in order to build a customer base. On top of that, they provide a certification program where you can specialize and receive a certificate. This enables you to generate more leads, which help get customers, which means more money in your pocket.

Fitness Franchises under $1k

Last but not the least, are you passionate about health and fitness? Check these franchises out that supporter healthier lifestyles. If you like to sell health product or supplements there’s no shortage of business opportunities. 

Enzacta

• Initial Investment: $249
• Franchise Fee: N/A

Enzacta is a simple, fun and profitable global company that anyone can run. When you start this business, you’ll essentially be selling a variety of health supplements and a skin care line. When you become part of their business, their mentoring program leads you to financial independence. This is a direct sales opportunity so any sales or marketing skills will help you perform better in this area. 

This franchise gives you an opportunity to own and run a global business with proven leadership. Plus, aside from making a lot of money, you can also enjoy yourself. Whether you’re starting a “home business” or looking for a “profitable product” for your existing or retail business, Enzacta is an option. 

Vemma

• Initial Investment: $299
• Franchise Fee: N/A

If you are passionate in the area of health and fitness, this company can help you make your passion into a profitable business. Vemma’s success lies firmly in the results of its clinically studied single-form product line. Since its inception in 2004, the company’s mission has continued to be strong, and help people make a positive difference in their personal lives.

Regardless of your work experience or educational attainment, Vemma’s rewarding business model takes a simpler and more social approach. If you share a product, you can also share it as a business, enabling others to do the same, you will be rewarded directly just by influencing your existing social network. This business is similar to many other multi-level marketing companies. 

So, if you dream of paying off debt, exchanging the traditional 9 to 5 for your schedule, earning a secondary source of income, running your own business, or all of the above, Vemma’s Business opportunities help you achieve that. Moreover, you’ll be helping people improve their health and personal finances along as you grow the business.