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Let’s make zoodles
School started here in South Florida, and suddenly I’m cooking nostalgically. Nothing fancy – just the dishes that used to be on heavy rotation when the twins were small. Last week, salmon patties. This week, zucchini noodles.
The twins started 10th grade now. (How is that possible?)
It had been two or three years since I’d made the zucchini noodles, so I pulled up the recipe in my phone app to check quantities. And while I was in there, I did something I had never once done before.
I read the method.
Step one: spiralize. Step two: salt the zucchini, let it sit in a bowl, then squeeze out the water. I always skipped that part, because – come on. Why would I wring out the water when I’m about to drop them in boiling water anyway?
Then I got to the cooking step. It said to sautée them in a pan with two tablespoons of butter.
I read it three times. Butter. A pan. NOT boiling water.
For years, I had been treating zucchini noodles like actual noodles. Two minutes in a rolling boil, drain, avocado basil sauce, toppings, done. Dozens of times. I thought I knew this recipe. I always double-checked the ingredients – I had simply never bothered with the instructions.
I announced my discovery. My kids were unmoved. “No, Mom, make it the way you always have. It was fine before.”
It was fine before. Hold onto that.
I made it the right way. And how did it turn out? Not watery, obviously. The texture was better. Same flavor, same nutrition, nobody’s life changed. It was just… correct. So yeah, I’ll be making it that way from now on.
WTF Moment: I only ever checked the ingredients.
Allow me to explain my mistake, because it wasn’t laziness. I had a reason for skipping the drain step. It sounded logical. I could have defended it at a dinner party. It was just built on a method I’d never actually read.
Here’s where this stops being about vegetables.
When you evaluate a website – yours, or the one an agency is proposing – you almost certainly check the ingredients. Does it have a location finder? Can I swap the hero image? Is there a blog, a careers page, a franchise inquiry form? Can I edit it myself without calling anyone?
That’s the ingredient list. Almost every platform on earth passes it.
Almost nobody asks about the method. How is this actually built? What happens when there are 40 locations instead of 12? When I change the CTA on the services template, does it change everywhere, or do I have to open 40 pages? How many plugins are holding this together, and what are they compensating for?
Ingredients tell you what the site has. The method determines what the site costs you every week for the next five years.
Why nobody catches it
Because the wrong way works. That’s the whole trap.
My zucchini noodles weren’t a failure. They were fine. Watery, sure – but I had no basis for comparison, so “watery” was just what zucchini noodles were like. My kids defended them. Nobody was suffering enough to investigate.
This is exactly what I run into with franchise websites built on visual page builders – Elementor, Divi, WPBakery. The marketing manager isn’t in crisis. They’re not calling me because the site is broken. It technically works. Pages load. Content gets published. And when a new site is on the table, they’ll fight to stay on the same builder, because it’s the only kitchen they’ve ever cooked in.
Meanwhile, in the background:
-
Speed drags, because the builder ships a lot of code you don’t need on every single page -
Plugins pile up to do what the setup can’t do on its own – each one another thing to update, break, and pay for -
Brand drift creeps in, because if you can edit anything, someone will. Fourteen font sizes appear. Colors that aren’t in your brand guide -
A 30-minute change takes two hours, and everyone has accepted this as the price of doing business -
The team’s energy goes to fixing instead of improving – you’re maintaining, not compounding
The honest ceiling
I’m not here to tell you visual builders are evil. They aren’t.
For a single-location business, a Franchise Development site, or a super-emerging franchise with one open location and two in the pipeline, a visual builder is a completely reasonable tool. It’s accessible, it’s faster to install, and nearly anyone can deploy it (you don’t have to be a seasoned developer).
The problem is scale and repetition. A franchise site is dozens or hundreds of near-identical pages that all need to change together, forever. That’s a systems problem, and systems problems need engineering. Building natively on WordPress – with a theme designed for your brand rather than adapted from a theme shop – takes actual development skill. That’s why fewer agencies offer it, and also why it holds up.
WordPress isn’t the limitation here. WordPress keeps getting better every year. What varies wildly is the method used to build on it.
Rx: This Week’s Prescription
Stop auditing the ingredient list. Start asking about the method. Four questions – ask them of your current site, or of the next agency that pitches you:
- “Show me a change propagate.” Pick one element that lives on every location page. Ask how it gets updated.
- “What are the plugins for?” Get the list. For each one, ask what it’s compensating for. A short list with clear jobs is a good sign.
- “Was this theme built for us, or adapted?” An adapted theme fits like a borrowed suit. It’ll get through the wedding, not through a decade.
- “How long does a routine edit actually take?” Compare it to what you assume it takes.
You will not discover any of this by looking at your website. It looks fine. It probably is fine. Fine is what keeps everyone from checking.
Read the method. You might find you’ve been boiling something that was always meant to be sautéed.
Warmly,
Madalina “Read the Method” Iordache
CEO at Bright Pink Agency
P.S. Suspect your setup has a method problem but can’t prove it? Our BrightStart plan is exactly that investigation – an in-depth audit of UX, SEO, content, and how your site is actually built, plus a roadmap for what to do about it. Think of it as finally reading the instructions before you cook for a hundred people.
P.P.S. My kids have since admitted the new version is better. The zoodles are back on rotation.
Bright Pink who?
At Bright Pink Agency, we build and maintain high-performing franchise websites. If that’s what you need, let’s chat.
