How Scoop Soldiers’ Enhanced Territories Helps New Franchisees Quickly Expand

Scoop Soldiers, the 35-plus-unit pet waste removal franchise, recently started offering enhanced territories to prospective franchisees where a corporate operation has already developed and built up an established client base in the market. The corporate team seeds the market with clients and builds name recognition so that when an interested franchisee comes along, they aren’t having to start from scratch.

John Amaroufi and Ron Battaglia, for example, originally signed on as Scoop Soldiers' first franchisees in 2019, opening two territories of the pet waste removal franchise in the Dallas area. From there, they went on to invest in two additional enhanced territories in Dallas. Now, after seeing the quick scalability of that model, they are already expanding into Tampa with another enhanced territory.

“When Ron and John started seeing how successful they were becoming with their original locations, they were eager to expand,” said Scott Oaks, VP of franchise development at Scoop Soldiers. “They came in and bought two territories in the greater Dallas area that were enhanced territories, and now they are bringing the brand to Tampa.”

Amaroufi comes from a long background in construction and finance. He bought a concrete construction company in 2011 before branching off into real estate and flipping houses on the side. Battaglia left a 25-year career in the corporate world to start his lawn care company. In the two decades since then, he has started several businesses and met Amaroufi through real estate investments.

“I heard randomly about Scoop Soldiers through an ad I saw,” said Amaroufi. “The services they offered were mindblowing. So when Ron walked into my office to go over some real estate investments and he told me he was already planning on going to the brand’s discovery day the next week, I decided to join him. The business plan looked really good, so I jumped in and I’ve been nothing but happy that I did.”

After Battaglia moved to Florida last year, they saw an opportunity to expand with the brand into the Tampa market. “The future is very compelling in the Tampa area,” said Amaroufi. “After looking at the numbers, I knew it would be harder to scale if we just picked one spot in the beginning. With multiple locations, you can gain more momentum to expand in the future.”

The enhanced territory model allows the franchisor to offer a wider variety of opportunities to its prospective franchisees while gaining insight that only comes with firsthand experience.

“Having enhanced territories allows us to continue to test new ideas, new best practices and new marketing strategies in varied markets before rolling them out to franchisees. Franchisees don’t have to be our guinea pigs, and we’re able to test out strategies in new geographies before opening those markets to franchise opportunities,” Oaks said. “We always want to have our hands in the day-to-day operations that franchisees will experience. Doing so allows us to be much more experienced consultants for our franchisees as they open up in those markets. This model puts us in an even better position to be able to problem solve and identify opportunities for franchisees.”

Looking ahead, Scoop Soldiers is planning to target another 30 additional franchise territories, either through existing or new franchisees and is targeting an additional five to six new markets, including in Seattle, DC, North Carolina and Salt Lake City, Utah.

“John and Ron are a prime example of how franchisees can leverage our enhanced territory model to achieve scalable momentum,” said Josh Cahill, president and co-founder of Scoop Soldiers. “We are very proud of them as our first franchisees and we are excited to see other passionate entrepreneurs follow in their footsteps.”

The total cost to invest in Scoop Soldiers ranges from $61,300 to $111,300 per territory. To learn more about franchising with Scoop Soldiers, visit https://scoopsoldiersfranchise.com/.