🍟 Week 21: Send Me a Trainer
An at home fitness franchise + a big franchisee acquisition
Welcome to The Wolf Report, a 2x/week email covering up & coming franchises & small business entrepreneur’s. If you’re reading this but haven’t subscribed, you can do so here:
Good morning,
Hope everyone is staying safe out there.
Just set up the temporary Wolf HQ workstation, where I’ll be spending the next week or so for the holidays. Mama Wolf gave me a Cinnamon Musk scented candle to burn while I grind. Needless to say the vibes are HIGH.
Today’s rundown includes:
Headlines: A massive Taco Bell franchisee was acquired
Breakdown: Send Me a Trainer - an at-home fitness franchise
Twitter Watch: A fractional trading platform for franchise ownership
Let’s dive in 👇
Franchise Headlines
Pacific Bells Acquired by Private Equity
The Scoop 🌮
Orangewood Partners, an NYC based private equity firm, recently acquired Pacific Bells, a taco bell franchisee with more than 250 restaurants, for a rumored $545,000,000 💰.
Pacific Bells’ founder and CEO Tom Cook opened his first Taco Bell in 1986 in Tualatin, Oregon. He’s since expanded his franchise footprint to 9 states: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Mississippi, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, Washington, and Wisconsin.
The Wolf’s Take 🍟
I was going to write more in this section, but this tweet from @JoeCassandra summed up my feelings perfectly:
Joe is exactly right, and this is why I love franchisee success stories.
Pacific Bell’s CEO didn’t invent a new business model, or develop some proprietary technology. He simply bought 1 Taco Bell, made it successful, and repeated that process over and over with more locations for the last 35 years.
Now he’s likely worth over 9 figures. The power of franchising 🙌
More Headlines
MOD Pizza Plans for IPO 📈
Founded in 2008, the build-your-own-pizza shop has already passed 500 locations
Bonjour Popeyes 🇫🇷
The first of hundreds of Popeyes in France & Monaco is set to open in 2022
FAT Brands Completes Native Grill & Wings Acquisition 🍗
This is the 3rd wing concept that FAT Brands has invested in
Breakdown: Send Me A Trainer
Fast Facts
Background
Founded in 2007; franchising since 2019
Based in Delaware; 19 locations open as of 2021
An in-home and online personal training business that uses proprietary technology to build a network of personal trainers & automate operations
Fees + Investment
Royalty: 6% of gross sales
Brand Fund: 2% of gross sales
Franchise Fee: $34,999
Initial Investment: $49,099 - $84,799
Financial Performance
The Wolf’s Take 🍟
To reiterate the background of this business - franchisees don’t need to deliver personal training sessions to clients - their job is sales and marketing. To automate operations, franchisees have access to a proprietary app that enables client and trainer registration, payment, booking, and payroll.
Regarding the financials - I’m not sure why the 2021 financials from Send Me a Trainer only includes data from 2017, but that’s what we have to work with. The numbers reflect their affiliate locations which, given an investment of $85k, is an incredibly healthy return on EBITDA of $219k-$238k 🤑.
The timing for this business is especially interesting to me, given that covid lockdowns have caused many people to forgo gym memberships and exercise more at home. In 2020 Send Me a Trainer only had 1 franchisee, but that number has jumped to 18 in 2021.
It wouldn’t surprise me if new owners are betting on at-home workouts to remain popular.
Recent News
Twitter Watch 👀
Read the above twitter thread if you want to learn about FranShares, a platform for fractional ownership of franchises!
The Wolf Of Everything Else 🌎
Lays turned its signature potato chips into…vodka 🍸
TikTok is launching in 1,000 ghost kitchens in 2022 🥡
Adidas teamed up with Allbirds on a sick shoe collab 👟
The world cup for
nerdsExcel wiz kids is a real thing 🤓Reddit is filing for an IPO, will it become a meme stock?? #meta 🚀
That’s it for this edition of The Wolf Report. Feel free to reply with any questions or feedback, or leave a comment. If someone sent this your way and you haven’t subscribed yet, you can also do that below. Thanks and see you next week!
NOTICE REGARDING FRANCHISE INFORMATION
The Wolf of Franchises does NOT guarantee the financial performance of any franchise mentioned. The decision to purchase a licensed affiliate or franchise must be based on your own independent research. The Wolf of Franchises is not liable for any representation made by an affiliate, associate, marketing material, or Franchise Disclosure Document of a franchise with respect to real estate, financial, operations, or marketing performance of the business being acquired.
This information is not intended as an offer to sell, or the solicitation of an offer to buy, a franchise. It is for informational purposes only, and any financial data is based upon information provided by franchises in their respective Franchise Disclosure Document. The offer of a franchise can only be made through the delivery of a franchise disclosure document, from a certified seller of the brand, which The Wolf of Franchises makes no claim to be. Do not consider any information here as a guarantee of financial performance. The Wolf of Franchises has no affiliation or relationship of any kind with any of the brands covered in this newsletter, but simply provides data that is publicly available online or in Franchise Disclosure Documents.
All data from Franchise Disclosure Document’s is based on past performance, and if you were to purchase a franchise covered in the Wolf of Franchises newsletter, there is absolutely no guarantee that your business will perform similarly to existing owners of said franchise.