Franchise in the Spotlight: Rolling Suds

First ever Tracer Podcast was an interview with JT from Rolling Suds.

Click Here to listen to the episode

About the franchise in their own words:

Rolling Suds is the premier franchise in residential and commercial power washing. Backed by over 33 years of experience in the recession resistant power washing industry, Rolling Suds is changing the way the industry operates. Rolling Suds offers a proprietary cleaning process that allows franchisees to do double the amount of work in the same amount of time with more efficacy than a normal exterior cleaning. Rolling Suds is the ONLY national franchise brand that focuses ENTIRELY on residential and commercial power washing. Other franchises get lost in gutters and windows, whereas Rolling Suds just focuses on the niche of power washing. It show in the numbers too because Rolling Suds trucks average over 424,000 with a 33% net profit margin.

We have a very comprehensive training program. Our "Power Launch Program" is an 8 week program designed to teach franchisees everything they need to know about running the business via virtual trainings, podcasts, videos, and structured phone calls. This will be followed by a one week in person training in PA. The goal of the Power Launch Program is to turn leads on at training and make sure the franchisee has a fully wrapped vehicle and employees hired prior to going to training. In previous brands, we were successful in launching franchisees with jobs secured and employees hired to work full time right out of training.

Facts

• Cash Investment:  $100,000-300,000K

• Total Investment: $182,650-291,100

• Minimum Net Worth: $600,000

• Franchise Fee: $54,950

• Royalty: 8%

• Ad: 2%

• Average Number of Employees: 2

Over View

What sets Rolling Suds apart is its equipment, systems, and approach to scaling. Each franchise starts with a custom 12-foot box truck equipped with industrial-grade pumps, 950 gallons of water, and several thousand feet of hose. Franchisees typically operate multiple territories (minimum of two), and each territory is roughly 100,000 households in size. The model is built for scaling by adding trucks, crews, and eventually managers.

Franchise Support Franchisees go through a nine-week onboarding and training program:

• Weeks 1-4: Light virtual training (~2 hours/day), hiring team, finding warehouse, ordering truck.

• Weeks 5-8: In-person commercial sales activity begins. Franchisees meet leads and bid on jobs.

• Week 9: In-person, hands-on training in Nashville with their new team and equipment.

Ongoing support includes monthly business reviews, marketing KPI checks, and P&L reviews. All franchisees use the same bookkeeping provider, making benchmarking and guidance much easier.

Franchise Leadership Team Rolling Suds is led by CEO Aaron Harper and Chief Development Officer JT Thiessen, who brings over 30 years of franchise development experience. The leadership team includes seasoned operators across marketing, training, and finance.

Customer Acquisition Rolling Suds acquires customers through three main channels:

1. Commercial: Two paid vendors cold call property decision-makers and book estimates. Franchisees also network locally with builders, property managers, and facility directors.

2. Residential: Google SEO, pay-per-click ads, review generation, and optional vendors for outbound calls and digital door knocking.

3. National Accounts: Rolling Suds has started signing multi-year contracts with national brands and government agencies. These jobs are pushed directly to franchisees.

What Makes Rolling Suds Special

• Professionalism: Clean branding, top-tier trucks, uniformed teams, and tech-powered operations.

• Efficiency: Crews power wash up to 4 stories without ladders and refill 950-gallon tanks in under 6 minutes.

• Technology: Tablet-based estimates, before/after photos, and real-time updates.

• Market Opportunity: $3B+ market with very little professional competition.

• Training: One of the most in-depth onboarding programs in home services franchising.

• Recurring Revenue: Government, commercial, and retail clients sign multi-year deals.

A Day in the Life of an Owner In the early stages, the franchisee is not out washing—they’re acting as a local CEO:

• Hiring and managing a lead tech and general manager in training

• Meeting with commercial clients and networking

• Overseeing local marketing spend and lead flow

• Participating in monthly calls with the franchisor for performance reviews

Over time, many franchisees add more crews and may hire a dedicated salesperson or step back into more strategic growth roles.

Earnings Claims from 2024 FDD

As of December 31, 2023, there is one (1) Rolling Suds outlets open and operating that are owned by our affiliate. This outlet is representative and is included in this disclosure. This outlet is located in Pennsylvania. This affiliate outlet has been in operation since 1990 and across a wide territory. For fiscal years 2019-2022 the affiliate outlet operated 5 trucks on a full time basis with 1-2 additional trucks supplementing the fleet as needed during peak periods. In fiscal year 2023, the affiliate owned outlet operated 4 trucks on a full-time basis with 1-2 additional trucks supplementing the fleet as needed during peak periods.

See Item 19 of the Rolling Suds 2024 FDD for full details and notes.

Analysis

Rolling Suds is an emerging brand that has a great foundation and is growing very quickly. The growth is fueled by the team and the numbers as well as being in a B2B market without many competitors. This growth can also be their biggest challenge. How are they going to onboard enough coaches and support for all these franchisees?

How are they going to maintain brand standards?

How big is their corporate staff compared to franchisees?

The Item 19 is only showing a corporate location that has been open for 30 years so it doesn’t tell you much about what you can do. The next FDD will be coming out soon and we will see how some franchisees are doing so I am excited for that.

The good thing is that although they have sold almost 300 territories, they only have about 90 franchisees which makes the system significantly more manageable than 300 franchisees.

Overall, I think this is worth consideration for franchise buyers due to the margins, leadership, simplicity of the business model, and focus on businesses over residential cleaning. There is more research that needs to be done, like the concentration of potential commercial customers in your local territory, but it seems extremely promising.

This franchise receives an A-, the newness of the franchise keeps it from being an A+ but everything else checks out.

Who is this for and who is this not for?

Rolling Suds is clear they want to work with owner operators focused on scale. It would be best if you have some B2B sales experience or at least having professional conversations with business owners and government agencies.

Ideal franchisees are not power washers—they are builders. The brand looks for:

• Sales or networking ability

• Management or leadership background

• Strong capital and full-time commitment

• Desire to build a multi-truck, multi-territory business

Many current franchisees are ex-executives or multi-unit owners in other brands (e.g., Orangetheory, Crumbl, FastSigns).

This is NOT for people who want to be “semi-absentee”, who don’t want to work shoulder to shoulder with their employees when getting things started, and who aren’t comfortable walking into businesses to provide estimates and do some negotiating.