Score: 14/100

This franchise is very expensive to start up, very expensive to market, and provides little to no value in return for your money. It is an unknown name and it is not worth your effort to help them build it. They do no marketing or lead generation on a national or even regional scale. They provide no real path to help owners turn new hires into technicians. Corporate turnover is super high; a new franchise support person every 4 to 6 months. (To the point where I don’t bother to learn their names or participate anymore.) With little exception, the few franchisees that are profitable are offering services that aren’t part of the franchise model, and “go against the brand promise”. The business model itself is very tricky, as your competition can offer more services than a standard franchisee can. A plumber pays the same customer acquisition cost you do, but can sell a lot more to make up for it. The brand pushes working with other plumbers, but very few plumbers will want to send you this kind of work. You cannot, on average, even break even until you’re running three trucks, which is a sizable business. I wouldn’t approach this with less than $500k in working capital. There is zero value to be gained here. AI can help you create employee manuals and SOPs, logos, how-tos, etc, if you want your own drain cleaning company, and you won’t have to give anyone 8% of what you earn.

By: Verified Franchisee

Score: 22/100

Corporate deflects when you bring up concerning issues about the system as a whole. They also tell you to “call other franchisees” if you ask how they will have you reach the goals they set for you. The model is very expensive and corporate can’t seem to comprehend that we cannot be as profitable as the original zoom drain that started in the 90s (apples to oranges). They also give us zero leads and continue to press that digital marketing is dead (because they can’t make headway there with their marketing team and website) and put 100 percent on us to develop local leads.

By: Verified Franchisee

Score: 23/100

The Zoom Drain system works well…at scale. The problem in my view is that the system is most appropriate for a business/location of $5m-$10m plus in scale that can afford to have the infrastructure to run emergency plumbing services 24/7 365, manage a group of technicians that is less experienced as compared with a general service plumbing business, and invest in very expensive capital equipment. There is no shared infrastructure at the franchisor level to replicate what exists at the original affiliate location and deliver it to franchisees. All attempts at this have failed or been shut down to include a call center, hiring and recruiting support, and marketing support (they only provide templates/”best practices” and vendor recommendations at this point). As a result, running the recommended model is impractical at best for locations in their first few years. I believe all locations but the two that have achieved $5m plus in sales (affiliate and one early franchisee) have built their own operating models, target customer sets, staffing schedules, marketing plans, etc. to try to survive in their markets. The franchisor isn't really doing anything to drive leads and since the system is a challenge to implement for startup locations it is hard to understand how they are delivering anything close to the value of the royalty/brand fund fees.

By: Verified Franchisee

Score: 27/100

75% of locations are losing money or breaking even. Corporate has no lead gen, wastes our brand fund on salaries, system is over priced and doesn’t work. Issue is that most people in corporate are not good at their jobs so support is not helpful.

By: Verified Franchisee