This is a question I asked earlier, but received no reply.  So I'm
adding a little clarification and upping the price I'm willing to pay
for an answer to it:

How many businesses have multiple locations in the United States and
how are they distributed? (how many owners own 2 locations, 3-5
locations, 5-10, etc.)  When it comes to franchisees, I'd like to
'look through' them and see the underlying franchise owners, each of
whom would count as a business.  So Subway wouldn't count as one
business with say, 10,000 locations, but rather as several thousand
businesses, each of which would have from 1 to X locations.
 
I did look a little at the SBA site and its data, and I was able to
conclude that there's somewhat more than 1 million establishments that
are apparently owned by companies that own other establishments.  But
it's the distribution of that ownership, as described above, that is
really of interest to me.

Hi Chanelops!

You're smart to try to rephrase your question for a better answer. 

However, I think you might want to clarify even more. Specifically,
what do you mean by "businesses"?  I see you've referred to the SBA.
Are you only talking about small owner-operated businesses? Or would a
researcher need to count large public companies, for example
Microsoft, that have branches world-wide?  Are you only talking about
retail? Or are you including say, doctor's offices or attorneys, who
often have offices in more than one town?

Due to the sheer volume of what you've asked for, I won't be
researching your question, but I do have a suggestion --

Since you mentioned franchises, perhaps you should contact the
specific franchise companies in the industry that you're interested in
-- fast food, quick-printing, gas stations, whatever. I'm sure they
provide such information to protential franchisees.

Good Luck!  

- Knowledge_Seeker

To answer knowledge seeker, yes, I am interested in all of the classes
you mentioned: large and small companies, doctor's offices, Microsoft,
retail, wholesale, whatever.  I am not interested in any particular
industry or sector, just overall statistics.  And I'm sure not
expecting anyone to count a million offices!  I just think that this
distribution of locations info should be out there in the real world
someplace, even in an approximate form.  It probably goes without
saying, but super-accuracy is not a requirement here, that really
would be mission impossible!

Wow. Tough question.
I have visited the census site,
http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/statab/sec17.pdf in particular, as
well as the statistical abstract of the United States,
http://www.census.gov/prod/www/statistical-abstract-us.html and I am
coming up with blanks as to the specific question of the breakdown of
business locations by owner.

In my own experience, in many cases a single owner will separately
"incorporate" (read as forming a corporation of LLC) for each
location, so you might have, say, 4 separate corporations, each owning
one McDonald's franchised restaurant, with one common owner. In the
alternative, I know of no requirement (IRS, etc.) that requires a
multi-unit owner (in one legal entity) to report how many units that
one entity owns, which makes me wonder whether the statistic you are
seeking actually exists, at least in any credible form.

Good question, though. Some guru out there might come up with an
answer.

Thanks for asking!

Tom

sometimes, as an expert answered on allexperts and askme, I have
learned to ask
a questioner, WHY are you seeking this data?  Sometimes, the "wrong"
data is sought
or a lesser effective research project is created.

one often wants to find out about chain stores to sell to the bigger
one, or to create
directories, or to find jobs, or for other reasons.

A chain store can be owned by a public and private corp, a
partnership, and a proprietorship.

Most governmental bodies do not TRACK esoteric data re sizes of
companies just to see how
big they are.  They track profits, employees, product sales, transport
needs, etc.

U are not indicating what u want to do with the data.

Plz advise.

To weisstho: your points are valid, and maybe this info doesn't exist,
I don't know.  On the other hand, it seems like it would have so many
different commercial uses uses that surely someone would have
developed it by now.

To kkemper: not a bad request, I don't mind providing some more info. 
Since this is for a commercial purpose, I won't be extremely specific,
but I can tell you that I want to provide a telecommunications service
to owners of multiple establishments.  I would use the data as part of
a description of the market in my business plan, and also to help in
figuring out how to price the service.  In addition, I believe the
data could have some marketing implications.  (For example, if the 1
million "extra" establishments are owned by 1,000 owners who own an
average of 1,000 establishments each, that has quite different
marketing implications than if they are owned by 500,000 owners that
each own an average of 2 establishments.)

Dunn and Bradstreet (http://www.dnb.com) has a database of companies
that includes information on multiple locations. So, you should be
able to get a list of Microsoft offices across the U.S. for example. 
I don't know whether they can parse the data for you in the way that
you want, nor do I know how comprehensive there data is.  Nonetheless,
if they can do it, that might be as close as you can get to an answer.
 Some of there reports can be on the expensive side as well.