🚨 I just invested into a new franchise 🚨

I’m excited to announce my partnership with a new franchisor as an investor, advisor, and soon-to-be franchisee.

What I love about this business:

Highly fragmented competition
Low-overhead + high-ticket
Residential & commercial
Fast-growing industry

Most importantly, the founders are dedicated to making franchisee profitability their number one priority.

Say hello to Waterloo Turf

Waterloo Turf is an artificial turf company that transforms backyards like this:

The artificial turf industry is growing very fast for multiple reasons.

Commercial turf has been around forever covering sports fields, indoor play areas, hotels, restaurants, dog parks, and more.

Residential is growing because it's convenient. You get your Saturdays back to enjoy it instead of mowing, watering, and applying chemicals.

Water conservation is a HUGE issue that’s only getting worse. Municipalities nationwide ban watering grass during droughts and incentivize homeowners to remove grass, helping offset the turf cost.

Business Model

Franchisees will start as the owner/operator: estimating, selling, and managing the projects.

This business can be operated from home, keeping your overhead low.

Leads will come through digital marketing, referrals, and building local B2B relationships.

You will find a crew of installers who get paid by the project. They will own the necessary tools & equipment (which is minimal).

Waterloo provides a ton of technical & hands-on training to help owners become turf experts within a matter of weeks.

They are about to launch a recurring revenue “turf refresh” plan, which many customers have requested to keep their turf looking great.

Earnings Potential

The founder launched his Austin location in 2021. Item 19 of the 2024 FDD includes a fully detailed P&L of 2023 and the first 10 months of 2024.

In 10 months, Austin did $1.162M in revenue with $252k “net income after add backs and franchise adjustments”, which includes paying a manager $86k

You’ll also see a detailed P&L of the San Antonio location, which launched in January 2024.

This market was operated remotely from day one. They found a great manager and trained him on the Waterloo playbook.

In the first 10 months of operating (starting from zero), San Antonio did $607k in revenue with $68k “net income after add backs and franchise adjustments”, which includes paying a manager $62k.

It's great to see the transparency with a detailed P&L instead of just showing sales.

One of the hardest parts of launching a new franchise territory from zero is estimating expenses & time to ramp up sales. The more information a franchisor can provide, the better.

Both of these markets represent multiple territories. See Item 19 in the 2024 FDD for full details.

Franchise Owner Profitability

Waterloo Turf is committed to making franchisee profitability their number one priority. What does that look like?

#1 Reduced Royalties - the bigger you grow your sales, the lower the royalty (starts at 6%, goes down to 4%)

#2 Large territories - allowing franchisees to build HUGE businesses

#3 Franchisor is well capitalized - giving them the ability to "forward invest" in support and be very picky when selecting franchisees.

This is just scratching the surface. Lookout for another email on a deep dive into owner profitability.

Start-Up Costs & Ideal Franchisees

A single territory of ~350,000 people is $106k to $134k which includes the franchisee fee, grand opening marketing, vehicle lease downpayment, working capital, and more.

Two territories, covering ~700,000 people is $156k to $185k. Three territories, covering over 1M people is $202k to $230k. Item 7 of the 2024 FDD has the full details on start-up costs & development agreement.

Waterloo Turf is looking for the “Team Captain”

Someone with experience leading a team — in sports, military, sales, or management.

They are driven to win, stay positive when facing adversity, follow the playbook, and never give up.

Like any new franchisor, early franchisees must enjoy the start-up vibe of working shoulder-to-shoulder with the founders and want to be part of something new.

They want active owners who will focus every day on building the business and love rocking cool hats like these: