Salty Dawg is a dog grooming salon franchise. The franchisor is Loyalty Brands, and the owners are John Hewitt (founder of Jackson Hewitt and Liberty Tax), Winn Claybaugh (co-founder and Dean of The Paul Mitchell Schools), and Gary Ratner (Hair Cuttery, My Salon Suites). Their plan is to grow Salty Dawg to a national brand with 1K+ stores. The larger plan is for Paul Mitchell to expand their dog grooming product lines and for The Paul Mitchell Schools to add dog grooming training and certification to all their schools.

I'm the franchisee for Salty Dawg's Dallas location and the CEO of one of the largest exterior contractors in the US. I opened the Dallas Salty Dawg shortly before the founder died because of the unique approach and ability to add multiple revenue streams. My initial plan was just to get myself and my partner into the franchising business. After opening the first updated design concept salon and steadily increasing sales from $2K/wk to $15K/wk in Year 1 I know that it is achievable to reach our goal of $20K/wk by the end of year 2.The business was established in August of 2023.

The business has grown consistently since opening and I'm confident we'll soon be doing $20K/wk and earning store-level profitability of 20%. I view this business as being very similar to the hair salon business. Same real estate, same accounting, similar operations and marketing. We hope this will be the Great Clips or the Sports Clips of pet salons. The numbers on a Great Clips, for example, are: it costs $200K to open, they do about $400K in sales, and they net about $80K. So roughly a 3-year payback period. Salty Dawg, though still in the growth stage, should be about double those numbers. It costs about $400K to open, they should do $800K+/yr in sales, and they should achieve store-level profitability of about 20%, so $160K annual profit and a 3-year return on investment.

I'm so confident in the Salty Dawg model that I am becoming an Area Developer for Salty Dawg to grow the brand in North Texas. That said, I'm listing my fully staffed Dallas Salty Dawg location for $425K. After that, my plan is to immediately build and open a few more salons across the Dallas Forth Worth (DFW) Metroplex.