Elite Multi-Unit Operators Eye Boardroom Salon for High-Margin, Amazon-Proof Franchise Opportunity

The post-COVID era has triggered a boom in the men’s grooming sector, but for many, finding a service franchise that captures high-net-worth consumers while staying insulated from the volatility of tech and AI disruptions can be difficult. Boardroom Salon for Men fills this gap. Under the leadership of Jeff Helfgott, the brand has built a premium, experience-driven model that attracts an affluent male customer base and nurtures attractive unit-level economics for franchisees. Now, it’s offering franchisees a rare vehicle for portfolio diversification with a clear payback timeline.

“We went through a value engineering exercise to get down the build cost to a three-year payback before we even began thinking about franchising,” Helfgott said. “Between optimizing the box size, streamlining the box cost, and then getting our AUVs up over a million dollars, we're looking at an average of over 20% EBITDA margin post-royalty. We're in a great spot.”

Founded over two decades ago, the brand has built its footprint primarily through corporate expansion, particularly across its home state of Texas. Now, though, Helfgott is working to build up the franchise side of the business, focusing on intentional, partner-led franchise growth. Thanks to the customer avatar and community-focused nature of the business, Boardroom represents an experience and opportunity that other grooming brands can’t replicate.

“The one place that really matters the most for people with discretionary income is experiences,” Helfgott explained. “We are elevating a part of your daily care routine into an experience that helps you relax, look great and feel confident. Boardroom is where men have gotten ready for over 22 years, and we have built a platform to make us successful for the next 50.”

Helfgott joined 1851 Franchise Publisher Nick Powills to discuss his franchising journey, the ideal Boardroom franchisee and his vision for the future of the brand. A transcript of Helfgott’s interview with Powills has been provided below. It has been edited for brevity, clarity and style.

Nick Powills: All right, Jeff, first to you, then the brand. How did you accidentally fall into franchising, and what's your franchise backstory?

Jeff Helfgott: I followed great people. I had a relationship with a private equity group from my time in consulting, and they made an investment in a Planet Fitness franchise in Austin, where I happen to be located. So they reached out to me, asked if I'd be interested in joining. I ran the math on Planet Fitness, and I couldn't figure out how it was profitable. I was very confused, but I trusted them. You know, they're great investors. And I met the founder at a Starbucks, and over 90 minutes, we had scheduled for 30, but we just talked an extra hour about people, culture, what we wanted to build. And I knew this was a guy I want to be working with. So I had no intentions of getting into franchising. It wasn't until I was on the other side of the gate that I got to see how profitable Planet Fitness could be, but it started me on this path. I'm very thankful for it.

Powills: One thing that strikes me about that opening is “So we just talked about people and culture for an hour.” I think that's the magic of franchising. Unfortunately, I think a lot of franchisors don't understand that's the magic. And so they look at like, “Do I rule with an iron fist or iron thumb over our franchisees?” They throw around terms, like we're going to default them for not doing what we told them to do. And when I hear these things, I'm like, “Yeah, but go back to the day that this franchisee signed, where you're like, ‘This person's going to be great for our business and we're bullish on them.’” What you just talked about is where I think most interviews should go versus like dollars and cents and “Let's go hit these fake goals that are pulled out of clouds.” How important is culture to what you're doing now?

Helfgott: It's huge. We're very early in franchising with Boardroom. We have three franchisees that are each fantastic. Boardroom was big in franchising for a number of years. And then our strategy pivoted to corporate stores. And it wasn't until I took over in January of 2024, I had the chance to kind of sit down and assess and realize this was better as a franchise business than a pure corporate store business. When we're looking to add other franchisees, we're being really thoughtful about who are the people we're inviting to our boardroom, because we have a great thing. Selfishly, the last thing I want is for my FDD to go backwards. We have had a number of years of same store sales growth. We just cleared a million in AUV. I wanna protect that. So from a selfish perspective, I have an incentive to make sure I'm bringing people who can help us grow the brand. But from just a quality of life perspective, outside of your marriage, a franchise agreement might be one of the deepest relationships that you have. You are tied to these people for 10 years. You should make sure they're the right people.

Powills: Do you believe in selling franchises or developing franchisees or awarding franchises?

Helfgott: The terminology is nuanced and I'll admit, I don't have the sophistication to be able to dance between them gracefully. What I look at is recruiting the best possible people to join our brand, because they are our representatives. They are our advocates. They're our brand champions in each of these markets. Who are the people who are best suited to be representing Boardroom in these markets? That's the lens that we look at each of these engagements are. Is this someone that's going to make our brand better? Or are we going to look at ourselves in the mirror and say, “Were we just excited about unit growth at the expense of the right unit growth?”

Powills: Give me the state of the union of the business right now. What do things look like, and where are you gonna try to get to?

Helfgott: It's one of my favorite conversations. We are crushing it right now. From a same store sales perspective, we're up over 13% year to date. Our new client traffic has cleared over 50% improvement from prior years. We are firing in all cylinders from a unit economics perspective. We built our go-to-market strategy around what new sophisticated franchisees look for. We went through a value engineering exercise to get down the build cost to a three-year payback before we even began thinking about franchising. And we feel really good at that between optimizing the box size, streamlining the box cost, and then getting our AUVs up over a million dollars. We're looking at an average of over 20% EBITDA margin in post-royalty. We're in a great spot. 

From a unit economics perspective, we built a great mousetrap. This year I want to add three to five new franchisees because. I really wanna make sure that we're bringing on people and that we're in a position to deliver on our side of the promise of being a franchisor that's equipped and capable of helping their franchisees meet their full potential in their communities. That's a really important responsibility. I have seen too many brands get so caught up in the thrill of franchise sales that they forget to focus on the delivery side of it. So we're going to go slowly, methodically. We're backed by patient capital. There's no timeframe in mind. And I feel very blessed to be in a position to be able to grow the right way.

Majority of our locations are corporate. When you look at our footprint today, we're at about 55 locations, and 10 of them are franchised. Although that number is where all of our growth is coming from in the future. We're actually selling off some of our corporate stores in what we call our emerging markets outside of Texas. But we're really excited to find someone that lives in market that can help that market achieve its full potential in Boardrooms. I see our corporate stores diminishing but never going away. I like franchisors that eat their own dog food by running their own stores. And frankly, from an EBITDA perspective, it provides me a tremendous amount of cashflow that I can use to reinvest in the system. So all of our growth will be through franchising. Opportunistically, if there's a great corporate store opportunity in one of our Dallas or Houston markets, we'd love to jump on it. Otherwise, we're excited to be growing through our partners and empowering them to, again, reach their full potential.

Powills: So the three franchisees own 10 locations currently. Did they pace at the same 13% comp sales as corporate or was there a variance?

Helfgott: They are exceeding that metric. They have some of the highest AUVs in the system. We have exceptional operators. We look at some of our corporate stores in our emerging markets as planting the flag so that we can land and expand. And those are harder markets to get traction. We all know from franchising, the real beauty is when the flywheel kicks off, when you have enough density in the market where you get name recognition. Say you have the best concept in the world. Portillo's is a great example. They grew like a weed, didn't necessarily get the density in some of these emerging markets where their name recognition matters as much as it did in their home markets. They're recognizing now it's hard to undo it and relaunch. We're trying to learn from these lessons that I've seen and others on our team have seen from years of being on the other side of the table with franchising.

Powills: Let me zoom out. If I oversimplify things on “How do I get to 900,000?” I'm going to use it for easy math. 300,000 is going to come from real estate selection. 300,000 is going to come from the strength of the brand and 300,000 is going to come through operations. And typically, if I look at a legacy system, especially when it's swung more corporate and we have a few franchisees, the operation side is underperforming, which means the only way we turn around those locations is if we get new blood in. So something in this pathway had these three completely buy into what the mission is, which now is a leg up as you're over-indexing now into franchising. It gives you tremendous value because if any candidate comes in and says, would you do this again? Of course, they're gonna say yes because they're outperforming what the corporate locations are doing. When you enter, how do you motivate them to go at the same pace or what were those initial conversations like with them?

Helfgott: In franchising, the biggest opportunity and biggest challenge is building and maintaining trust. When I took this seat in January of ‘24, my first priorities were building relationships with our corporate store team. I visited every corporate store that we had across the entire country in the first three months. But I also met our franchisees face-to-face and listened to them. I wasn't gonna promise franchising our future. I did promise them a seat at the table. For anyone that commits their net worth, but more importantly, their reputation and their community to a brand like ours, they've earned the right to sit at the table and help nudge us in the right direction. And I love franchisees that help me push the boundaries. Being on both sides of the table when I was at Planet Fitness, European Wax, I was the franchisee that was telling the franchisor, “This is great, and it could be even better if you allowed us to do X. Give me a little bit of rope to play with, here are the measurements of performance, we'll align on this up front. And if it's successful, we could talk about, is this something that just worked because of us as operators or is this scalable?” 

I want franchisees who understand the left and right limits of what I'm willing to do with the brand, but who will also tell me, “Jeff, we need to push on those boundaries a little bit in order to meet what our clients and members are telling us they want from Boardroom.” So again, all that starts in trust. If you have trust from the beginning that you're looking out for their self-interests as your franchisee, if you think of them as true partners, you invite them to the table. And when they have ideas, you give them the time to share what it is and unless it's really detrimental to the brand, give them a little bit of rope to play with. With that trust that continues to be earned and compounded, you can do incredible things. And I think that's how the best brands are built.

Powills: Another thing you talked about in your State of the Union is the concentric circles. As you continue to scale on this, one thing that I noticed on your franchise website, which I loved, is you're saying here's the investment for three units because you're signaling to the investor, “Until you get a little bit of momentum in your marketplace, then the expectations might not be a million dollar AUV. It's going to take time to build this up.” How important is taking what you've learned and cross-applying this in the way that you're looking at this franchisee to say you have to scale this at a pace that is healthy in order to get those AUVs?

Helfgott: I think this is the joy of having a franchisor who is being built by people who have been on both sides of the table. We just brought on a new head of franchise support. His name's Matt Weiss. He was in the massage industry as a franchisee for a long time. I think it makes us more empathetic to our franchisees, and I think it adds credibility because we're bringing experiences from both sides of the table to inform building a franchisor that we would want to be franchisees of. And sometimes that means saying no to people that you love, but aren't well-capitalized or sophisticated enough in order to follow a playbook. I think every franchisor would love to attract people who know how to follow a playbook and bring their other assets to help scale a brand, but you have to earn your right to get up on their dashboard. 

What we're looking for early on are people who are well-capitalized enough and more importantly, well-connected and willing to do the work to stay connected in the local community so we earn the right to be considered. There are some great options in barbershops that already exist today. We're trying to claw the right to be the top choice in every market with a premium offering for sophisticated, affluent male customers. That's a relationship business. And franchisee partners who understand that one of the major success criteria of being successful in the market is investing in that community. That means making the investment financially, but that also means doing the work of extending your personal network, spending time, shaking hands, sponsoring local sports teams where it makes sense. But being that cornerstone of the community, that's hyper important. And we're looking for people who understand that and that comes naturally.

Powills: I think the biggest challenge, at least the way that I see it for you, is you are clearly a brand that can be conditioned for building wealth because of the volumes and what's dropping to the bottom line. The challenge ends up being at the higher end of the investment, and your numbers are right, you're gonna need a half a million dollars liquid to finance the rest of it, to get the three units open. The challenge is to have a half a million dollars liquid, you're going after people that have already had success. How do you pair success with “I'm willing to put in at least the initial work to build up my scale and be a member of the community in a way that maybe I don't feel like I have to do anymore because I've already earned some wealth”? I think that's the biggest challenge versus say some of the lower investment brands that occupy the haircutting space. They're going after people that have built up a lot less from a cash standpoint, and they're selling semi-absentee as a big part of the play. And so do you agree or disagree that you're trying to find well-capitalized people that still have the energy to have some hustle in their story, which means it is a needle in the haystack.

Helfgott: It is, and I think that's why we're setting aspirations for growth that reflect that reality, rather than again, sling licenses to people who might not match that criteria and then diluting the experience for our clients, members, but also frankly, our other franchisees. We want people who will push us, make us better. Those are people who are generally already successful, but could be even more successful with our help. And in my experience in running a couple of private equity-backed companies and working with affluent clientele in a number of other businesses, successful people wanna be surrounded by other successful people. I think that's what's great about the Boardroom concept. With an affluent male customer base, you are bringing together captains of their communities, whether they're entrepreneurs who are very successful, whether they're other franchisees of other brands that have grown, whether they're CEOs or middle management of FANG [Facebook, Amazon, Netflex and Google] companies, right? Those are the people that you get to interact with on a daily basis. Those are the people who are giving you feedback.

 I think people who have already had success and are looking for another concept that de-risks their portfolio a little bit. QSR is tough. You spend a lot of time, multiple day parts, just trying to get a 12% margin. I have never had a hair emergency that requires opening overnight or like food inspections. It's a great business to be in. You get to work with fascinating people. So I think we can be a little bit more selective of who we invite.

But the other component to this that I learned recently, some of those successful people have sons and daughters that they want to make successful. So they look at their investments that they've made in the past as giving an opportunity to maybe fund a business that their children can be building their own legacy off of. And this means you get to earn it. As the operator, you're not giving it, you're maybe giving a headstart, but at the end of the day, what you make of that is up to you. I love talking with those types of franchise candidates because they bring enough sophistication to provide a safety net, not a crutch, if they're franchising.

Powills: You think an Anytime Fitness franchisee would fit the profile of who you're looking for?

Helfgott: If they had enough density in the market, absolutely. I think they could be a great fit. I think the idea of an absentee business, that doesn't exist in our line of work. You're always building relationships, you're always talking to people. And my favorite example is, whether you're at Costco on Saturday morning or church on Sunday morning, if you are known as the Boardroom franchisee of that market and someone had a bad experience or a great one, they're gonna come up to you and talk to you about it.

We're looking for people who have that passion and are willing to be the one that's known in that community. For people that are running fitness concepts, I think that's a great toehold because it's part of the overall wellness. Traditionally, men like to feel great and women like to look great. And now we're seeing many men start to say, well, hey, I wanna look great too. So the timeliness of Boardroom ascending in the post-Zoom era where everyone's always looking at their hair, always wants to be looking great with as few filters applied as possible. Boardroom is a great concept for that.

Powills: Let's close on this. Let's say someone's watched this, give the closing mark on why they should reach out.

Helfgott: We're at a great time because there's ambiguity in the market. Uncertainty creates opportunity. We're at a time in which Amazon Prime could roll out a new feature and take out businesses overnight. Look what they did with Rackspace with the Amazon Web Services. Sam Altman, ChatGPT, like they're finding ways to take software companies out of business. The one place that really matters the most for people with discretionary income is experiences. And we are elevating a part of your daily care routine into an experience that helps you relax, look great and feel confident. Boardroom is where men have gotten ready for over 22 years and we have built a platform to make us successful for the next 50. We're looking for people that'll help us get there.

Powills: You've made it sound appealing to anybody that's looking at the business category. One, I love the category. I think it's tremendous. I still think there's a tremendous blue ocean that exists. And I think what you've done with the brand so far, how you're positioning the business opportunity, you're definitely taking it best in class. And above everything, the most magical thing of what you said from a business standpoint to me, you said, we went back to the drawing board or the boardroom and you perfected the three-year payback on initial investment. The brands that do that are a viable business. The brands that don't are a hobby business. And because you took the time to do it before pushing down the pedal on franchising, I think when someone comes to the table, you've eliminated any of the potential concern that could come up with another business. And then your approach to how you've set this thing up is awesome. I look forward to seeing where the story goes. I'm grateful that you shared some of your story with me today.

Helfgott: Thank you for the kind words. Again, with your experience and background and visibility into the industry, that means a tremendous amount. So thank you.

Watch the full interview above or on YouTube.