Live at Franchise Expo South 2026

AI was not used in the creation of this podcast. This is the Social Geek Radio Network. Hello, geeks, and welcome to the Social Geek Podcast. I’m Jack Monson, your host and marketing Consigliere. Year 17 of the most popular Franchise podcast rolls on. This week, we’re live in Chilly, Fort Lauderdale at Franchise Expo South. We’ll talk to Frandev leaders and CEOs from many different brands to find out how hot the landscape’s going to be in 2026.

All right, today’s show is brought to you by AnswerConnect and Thunderly. Are your Frandef marketing, advertising, content marketing, and PR teams really working together? Learn how Thunderly’s amplified integrated marketing can drive franchise development growth at thunderlymarketing.com.

We’re live at Franchise Expo South for 2026, and if you walk into the exhibit hall and see a giant green duck, you’re at the right place, because you will find my new friends from Pool Duck, chatting now with Justin Denham. Justin, tell us about Pool Duck.

Yeah, Pool Duck, we rebranded about two years ago when we discovered that we really had some really strong systems, but we didn’t have a great brand image. So we ultimately made a quick shift and added, I think, a really, really great brand to this.

Yeah, it definitely jumps out when you walk into this exhibit hall, the big green duck. So great job on the rebrand. And I love a franchise brand that is not afraid to make some changes and do something new, especially when it comes to their branding and trying to get a little bit more awareness out there with a cool brand like Pool Duck. So congratulations on that. Tell us about the brand. What do you guys do?

Pool Duck is a brand that focuses on weekly pool service. So we provide weekly pool service as well as equipment repair for pools. So that’s our primary bread and butter.

Got it. And I would assume you’re very big in Florida.

We are in the pool. Yes, yes. We are an emerging brand. We are hitting the ground sprinting here in 2026. And we have some pretty strong goals this year.

Very good. Tell us about those goals. Do you want to expand into certain geographic areas? Do you have some numbers in mind, that sort of thing?

Yeah. So we currently have two franchise partners. Okay. And they are completing training right now. So as I said, we’re an emerging brand.

Yeah.

And so this year, I’ll just give a couple of our goals. We have our primary goal is 12 franchise partner locations this year. We have a stretch goal of 18 that I think we would hit our goals easily. But we’re going to be very intentional about our growth. Yeah. We’re going to make sure that we don’t rush to failure. Yeah.

I like that idea, especially at sort of an early stage of not just selling to anyone who can write a check right now. Right. So congratulations on those goals. We wish you the best of luck with that. If someone would like to talk to you about an opportunity with Pool Duck, where can they reach you?

Yeah. We’ve got a few ways to reach us. The first is to go through our franchise, Franchise website. That’s poolduckfranchise.com. You can also reach out to us via email at Franchise at poolduck.com or you can call our phone number 844-404-Duck. That’s 3825.

Alright. Very good. Love it. Justin, thanks for dropping by today. Good luck with the rest of the show and we will see you soon.

Thank you.

Franchise Expo South continues chatting now with Scott SirLouis from FSC Franchise Co. Scott, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks, Jack. Glad to be here.

So tell us about FSC Franchise Co. What do you guys do?

Sure. We are the owner and franchisor of two different restaurant brands. Okay. The first is called Beef O’Brady’s. We have about 125 of those. They’re a family sports bar, sports pub.

Love Beef O’Brady’s.

Primarily in the Florida and the Southeast. Okay. We’re also the franchisor of the Brass Tap. The Brass Tap is a craft beer bar, also a restaurant. We have about 50 of those spread across the United States.

All right. So this is my favorite conversation of the day because we’re talking about beef and beer. So tell me about Brass Tap. Is it a lot of local beers depending upon where the franchisee is located? How do you manage that?

Absolutely. So Brass Tap is really an upscale sports bar, generally between 45 and 60 taps per restaurant or bar. And usually about half of those are local. So we have a beer guy on staff at our corporate office, and his job is to identify all those local breweries and go out and facilitate partnerships between our local franchisees and the local breweries down the street. So it’s really a key part of the concept.

So that’s a great support role that the franchisee doesn’t have to be the person who already has relationships with all of the craft brewers.

Absolutely. We bring the expertise in and offer to the franchisee to be able to let them really engage in their community with those local partners.

Nice. There’s a lot of great support out there from franchisors, but that sounds like the dream job for somebody.

So for the right beer person, it’s a great job.

Tell me about your plans for 2026. Do you have a growth plan or areas of the country that you’re growing in or anything like that that you’d like to share?

26 is shaping up to be a great year for us. We’re going to open somewhere between 12 and 15 locations. Nice. I’m pretty confident in the 12 and my stretch goal is the 15. We actually open on Monday at a location in Forney, Texas, that’s a suburb of Dallas.

Nice.

That’ll be our ninth location in the DFW market, so it’s a great market for us. We have a total of 64 stores in the pipeline, so growth is solid for the Bratstap. Our franchisees have been successful and happy and we’re excited about where we’re going with them.

Yeah. Happy franchisees, that’s the name of the game.

It is the key. I love to hear that.

Yeah, terrific. If someone would like to talk to you about an opportunity with either of the two brands, where can they reach you? Website, email, what’s the best place to catch up?

Yep, the best place to start is fscfranchise.com. That will take you to our home page and you can click through to either of the brands on the franchise sales websites, get as much information as you need to make your decision on which direction you’d like to go.

Alright, very good. Scott, thank you so much for joining us here in the Podcast Zone. Have a great rest of the show.

Thanks, Jack. Great to have been here.

Bob Crawford is the CEO of Central Bark and he joins us now here in the Podcast Zone on Social Geek. Bob, welcome to the show. Great to be here, Jack. What do you think of this event so far for Franchise Expo South? It’s been terrific. We’ve had a lot of good interactions and I’m hopeful for the rest of the day and tomorrow. Very good. Yeah, I think it’s been a lot busier than other shows in the past, even in Fort Lauderdale, so something’s in the air. I think business is going to boom in 2026. From your lips, my ears. So tell us a bit about the brand before we get into what you’re doing in 2026. Tell us about Central Bark. Central Bark is a safety first, dog-centric pet services brand. It’s a brick and mortar business where we offer industry leading dog daycare, overnight boarding, grooming, and training services. We have 44 locations in 16 states. Nice. And just finished our best year ever in sales and franchise profitability. And we’re looking forward to continuing to expand and give more dogs Central Bark experiences.

Excellent.

People love having experiences for themselves, and now they’re going to love doing that for their dogs as well. Dogs bring joy and unconditional love in our business, and it’s amazing to see how we feed on that and how we provide it. Okay, I got to ask you this question. What’s your favorite type of dog? What breed or type? Oh my gosh. What do you love the most? Jack, it’s like choosing your favorite child, right? I love all dogs equally. Oh, there you go. However, I do have a soft spot in my heart for my dog, Georgia, who’s a doodle. But I do have a secret love of Frenchies, French Bulldogs. Frenchies, yeah. Yeah, you and everybody else, I think that’s the most popular breed in America right now. It’s one of the top three, I think. Well, I have a Shiba Inu, which I would not recommend to anyone. They are an absolute terror, but you got to love it. Okay, so let’s talk business for 2026. You said 2025 was your best year ever. Tell me about 2026. What’s that like? We’re going to repeat it. There you go. And I say that because I’m just so confident in what I see in the marketplace with our franchisees and the service that they provide, the value that they provide, and just how inspiring they are, quite frankly, to how they know and love the dogs and their care. It is truly inspiring and it’s incredible. So it starts with the love of the business that our franchisees have day in and day out. It’s a 24-7-365 business. But then layered on top of that, we have some really neat, innovative approaches on the marketing side, on the technology side that are really going to transform our business. Excellent. We look forward to seeing that and if anyone would like to have a conversation with you about the opportunity with Central Bark, where can we send them? You should go to the web, centralbarkfranchising.com. All right. Easy enough. Check it out, Bob. Thanks so much for joining us here in the Podcast Zone. Thank you. Back on Social Geek by Popular Demand, it’s our old friend Mike Ackley. What’s going on, Mike?

Not a lot, Jack. How are you?

Oh, I’m doing great. It’s great to see you here in Florida at the Franchise Expo South. Tell us what you’re up to these days. You’ve got a job you’ve been at for…

Three years.

Three years.

Time flies. It’s been an amazing ride so far. So I am with the Franchise or that owns Huddl House and Perkins. Both brands have seen record breaking growth, which is phenomenal for Perkins is 65 years old, Huddl House is 60 years old. Last year, we sold well over 75 locations. It’s pretty remarkable. The Perkins story in particular because we have our revamp of our mainline prototype or full service prototype, and we launched a new QSR model called Griddle and Go, which is a mini Perkins essentially.

So that’s going to be in like airports and places like that?

Airports, but it’s also street side. So that has taken off like a rocket ship and we have sold out whole territories in New Jersey, Texas, California. It’s been amazing.

That’s great. So I would assume people who are nervous about real estate, that’s a great alternative for them, right?

Yes, because our prospects who are buying whole territories, we allow them to do both the full service model and the QSR model. And our prospect that we sold in Monmouth County, she’s opening her first location in two weeks from now.

Wow.

In Oceanport, where I grew up. Which is really cool.

Nice. Going to go back and visit once in a while.

Yeah, all the time. Yeah.

Love that. So you guys are actually booming right now. There’s a lot of brands that wish they could say they sold as many units as you did last year.

Yes.

So what do you see happening as we transition into 2026? Sort of same pace of growth? Are you moving into new areas? What do you really see for this year?

Well, it’s really interesting because prospects are a lot more educated than they were even when I was at Brand Journalist. Because of Chat GPT, people get answers rapidly and so they come to us with really specific targeted questions. We have to personalize our sales cycle a lot more. The sales cycle lasts a little bit longer as a result. But as long as you can keep up with that, you’re in a good place.

That’s great. That’s great. What are we looking at geography wise? I know especially Huddle House has a real sweet spot in a certain part of the country. Is that more of that or moving into new areas? Or where do you see that happening?

So with Huddle House, we are still focused on the southeastern United States. Perkins, we’re going all over. We’re actively looking at Canada and the Caribbean.

Nice. It’s cool.

Perkins of the Caribbean.

There you go.

We’ll call Johnny Depp.

I think that might be an opportunity I would like to talk about. That’s kind of a dream, right?

Totally.

Great American food in the Caribbean.

Yes, exactly.

If someone would like to talk to you about any of the brand’s opportunities, and by the way, I love that Huddle House is 60 years old and that’s your new brand.

Yes, that’s our new brand.

If someone would like to talk about Perkins or Huddle House and maybe partnering with you, where’s a good place for them to reach you?

Visit huddlehousefranchising.com or perkinsfranchising.com or hit me up on LinkedIn, Michael Ackley, A-C-K-L-E-Y.

All right, very good. Mike, thanks for stopping by the Podcast Zone. Have a great rest of the show.

Thanks, Jack.

Back in a moment after a word from AnswerConnect, running a franchise can be a challenge. Missed calls mean unhappy customers. There’s a solution. Meet AnswerConnect, your 24-7 professional answering service. AnswerConnect will make sure every call gets answered, day or night, creating delightful experiences for your customers. With AnswerConnect, you’re not just answering calls, you’re building relationships. AnswerConnect, your business answered. Call Karen Booze at 888-822-2034. That’s 888-822-2034. We’re live once again at Franchise Expo South, chatting now with Christina Gambino. Welcome to the podcast.

Hi, thanks for having me.

Tell me about your brand.

Well, it’s Jump Twist Ninja. It’s a new franchise. It’s very exciting.

I see a lot of things going on over there at your booth. You’ve got people hanging and jumping and doing all kinds of ninja stuff over there.

Yeah, so this is a ninja gym, which is kind of a new sport, but not that new. It will be featured in the next Olympics as obstacle course racing. Yeah, it’s replacing Equestrian, actually.

Oh, so our Equestrian audience is not going to be thrilled about that. But I think the millions of viewers per week of some of these shows will probably really get into it. So when is this starting? It’s an Olympic event. Is this in 2028?

2028.

Wow.

Yeah, this is not a game show anymore. This is a real sport. And that’s why this industry is growing so fast. I competed on American Ninja Warrior for the first time in 2017. There was no ninja gyms pretty much. I think maybe there was one ninja gym in South Florida. Yeah, one. They’re not even here anymore. I don’t think maybe you had to go to like Orlando or North. So I had to live in an RV, drive around the country and go to the little bits of scattered ninja gyms that existed. That was not even 10 years ago, and now they’re in almost every major city in America.

Sure. That’s great. So if you want to compete in 2028, you better get your ninja on real soon, right?

You have to come to Jump Twist Ninja.

How long would it take your average, let’s say decent athlete to train, to get to that sort of level?

Well, that’s actually a great question, and I can answer from experience because we have coaches and clients that have came to my gym. They’re like, oh, I do parkour or crossfit, I feel fit, and then they get humbled very fast.

That hurts, right?

But as long as they have that body awareness and the discipline to keep showing up, in a year or two, especially if you’re at a great gym like Jump Twist Ninja where we have phenomenal coaches and equipment and safety padding, because injuries could hold people up also. So being in a safe, positive and fun environment with the right coaching, we can get you there fast.

Nice, very good. So let’s talk about the business opportunity as a franchise owner for folks out there. Any plans for growth this year? Are you moving into other parts of the country? What do you really want to do in 2026?

I’m expecting to have two new locations this year. I actually officially launched the franchise two years ago, and I have a hundred percent rejection rate. I’m sorry to tell everyone that.

You got to count your no’s before you give a yes, right?

I could have had at least 10 locations by now, but I don’t, I’m not in a rush. I know where this brand is headed, and I need the right people to get there.

It’s good to be selective and not just sign somebody up for the sake of signing somebody up.

A lot of people have money.

Especially if they’re not going to succeed.

A hundred percent, or not just if they’re, yeah, if they’re not going to follow the rules. We need entrepreneurs because they have to have that drive, that innovation, because I do plan to grow with my team. I want to know if they found a way to do something better. And that’s my style as a franchisor. It’s a team. You’ll see in the logos everywhere, it’s team jump twist. Whether you’re on the course or you’re running the gym, we are a team. I want to grow together, adapt together, and I’m recruiting leaders, not looking for leads and prospects. I’m recruiting leaders on my mission.

Who would be a great leader for you? Who would be a great franchisee, like personality type and that sort of thing?

Someone very high energy. You got to be, you know, you don’t have to be, like, involved in fitness. Like, it helps if you can coach a class, because, you know, people either disappear or get sick, and it would be very helpful if you could jump into a class to cover. So, you definitely would want to think, can I coach a class? So, are you comfortable coaching? Do you like kids? If you don’t like kids, just find the next franchise, okay? Because there’s-

I can think of a few other franchises for you.

Loud, I mean, anyone that goes through my phone screening as employees in one of my locations, like, the first question is, do you like kids? If they hesitate, I don’t know, because kids can be annoying, that energy.

Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, especially at the end of the day, in the end of the week, not a good time. That’s good to know. So we’re going to grow up by a couple more units this year, pretty much focusing on Florida still, or what’s your plan there?

I’d like to stay in Florida, but I have new staff that are relocated in my corporate headquarters. So they’re in Atlanta and Orlando, which is still Florida. But I’m interested in Atlanta, because I have our marketing developer, who is boots on the ground over there, and she’s been with me for three years. So that would be a great place, Atlanta.

Yeah, love it. So listen up out there. If you’re in the Atlanta area, this could be an opportunity.

Yeah, for sure.

If someone would like to talk to you about the opportunity, where’s the best place for them to go?

jumptwistninjafranchise.com. You could fill out the form and you’ll get some emails. I will follow up. We could do a discovery call, discovery day. We could do a discovery week. Come on down to JumpTwistNinja. We’ll show you what’s going on. It’s a lot of fun. We do camps, birthday parties. I just had my daughter’s first birthday party at my gym. I had a mariachi band. It’s a ninja fiesta. Everyone said this was the best party they’ve ever been to. My staff was amazing. I want to leave a review, but can I do that as the owner? I’m like five stars, you know? The staff was great. They set up, they cleaned up, they ran a great party. I didn’t have to do anything. I was a guest.

There you go. All right. Well, we would love to check one of those out sometime in the near future. And if anybody would like to talk to you about that opportunity, please reach out. Thank you so much for joining us here in the Podcast Zone. And have a great rest of the show.

Awesome. Thank you. Bye, guys.

Back at Franchise Expo South, chatting now with Mark Sturman. Mark, tell me about your brand.

Our brand is My Lobby Mart. It’s a cashless, employee-less, convenience store. So we put in apartment buildings, condos, offices, vent venues, and it’s not the honor system. It’s you tap a credit card or our proprietary app, you open a door, you walk in, take whatever you want, and you walk right out. You don’t have to scan anything. You just walk in, walk out, take what you want. Tenants love it. Landlords love it. It’s a wonder, no employees. It’s a growing, fast, fun business.

You had me at employee-less, right? There’s just, there’s something about that right now that really is going to catch on with a lot of people, I think, when we’re looking at some of the issues in franchising right now. How long have you been doing this?

We’ve been doing this for a year and a half now. I’ve been in franchising about 20 years and I’ve had other brands I won’t talk about, you know, I won’t say the words misogyny, but labor is our biggest problem.

Yeah, sure, yeah, absolutely. So tell me about 2026. What’s it look like for you as far as goals and growth and all of the big things you want to do this year?

Well, anybody that I tell about the concept, they’re incredibly excited. It’s a very low cost to entry. To open the doors, it’s somewhere around 65,000. I have my attorney extraordinaire here, Lindsay Morgan. I could say about what it cost to open, or she says yes. It’s about $65,000 to open your doors, inventory, franchise fee and everything. We help you find locations. And so what was the question?

Just all of the things you want to do in 2026.

So we have, the demand has been crazy. So if we don’t sell 100 stores in 2026, we’ll be disappointed.

Wow, that’s a good goal. I love a great big goal for a new year. And I also love that you brought your attorney. I think that’s a first time for us in the podcast zone that someone brought their attorney to the podcast. So Lindsay Morgan, please let us know if we go off the wrong track and we need to reel it back. Tell us about your firm, Lindsay.

Thank you. I’m a partner with CM Law and we are a fully remote all partner firm that because of our low overhead or practically non-existent overhead, we can provide partner level service at much lower rates than traditional big law firms.

So I’m not paying for like a big law office in Washington DC with marble walls and things like that.

And fancy artwork and summer associate parties.

That’s my kind of law office. I love that. So we’ve got we’ve got virtual law offices and employee list convenience stores. This is definitely 2026. Isn’t it happening right now? It is. Mark, if someone would like to talk to you about maybe partnering with you, maybe franchising with you, where’s a good place for them to go to connect?

They can either go to mylobbymart.com or text me directly. Part of why I love the franchise world and I’ve been involved for so long is, I like helping me make people successful, as does Lindsay. That’s why we work together. You can always reach me on my cell phone at 954-868-5812.

Very good. We’ll have links to all of those places in today’s show notes. Thank you so much for dropping by the Podcast Zone. It was nice meeting both of you.

Just one last question.

Yes.

Can we put you down for two or three franchises?

Well, if you start bringing in some pizza that we talked about earlier, you may have not only a customer, but a franchise in the end.

Sounds awesome.

Very good. Thank you so much for joining us today. Have a great rest of the show.

Thanks for having us.

Franchise Expo South 2026 continues now. Chatting with Daniel Trigo from UniVista Insurance. Daniel, welcome to the show.

Hi Jack. How are you?

I’m doing great. Thank you for having me here. Yeah. It’s pretty busy here for a Friday morning in Fort Lauderdale, right?

Yeah. It’s a pretty good crowd here.

Yeah.

Nice venue. I see this is very, very large venue.

Yeah. Yeah. Nice venue. Love what they’ve done with this place over the past few years, and love seeing so many people walking in the door right now. Tell us a bit about UniVista Insurance. What are you guys working on these days?

All right. Yeah. Excellent. We are an insurance agency. We’re based in Miami, and right now we have about 300 stores between Florida and Texas. Wow. So, I would say we are the largest independent insurance agency, our franchise, and we serve all the customer segments. So, we do auto insurance, home insurance, commercial insurance, life and health insurance. So, to our franchisees, we provide everything they need to launch a successful insurance agency. So, and then, what makes us different is a lot of the stuff we do ourselves. So, we have our own software department. So, a lot of the softwares that we use are custom made for us, and they’re maintained by us.

Got it.

And the same with the marketing. We have our own marketing team.

So, good support on the operations and marketing for your franchisees.

Yes, and we also have an excellent relationship with insurance companies. So, we provide better benefits for our franchisees.

Got it. Nice. So, tell me about 2026. What are you working on next? Any goals for the year that you’re looking at?

Yeah, this year we’re expanding a lot in Texas. Last year we had a tremendous year. We sold about 60 franchisees.

Wow.

And then for this year our goal is 80. And so, we’re getting up for Texas and North Florida. Those are our main targets.

Got it. Very good. If someone would like to talk to you about an opportunity, where should they reach you?

Yeah. The best way to reach us is through our website. It’s www.univistainsurancefranchise.com. And then they can fill up a form there. And for sure we’re going to contact them right away.

All right. Very good. Well, thank you so much for stopping by the Podcast Zone and have a great rest of the show today.

All right. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Stephen Hitt from Industrious joins us now in the Podcast Zone at Franchise Expo South. Stephen, welcome to the show.

Welcome. Yeah. Thanks, Jack. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for being here. Nice crowded show so far today.

Yeah, it’s busy. This is fun. This is actually my very first expo.

Is it really? Oh, we’ve got a newbie here, folks.

I love it.

So what’s your experience so far? What do you think?

It’s cool. It’s exciting. So Industrious, we’ve been fortunate enough to have a lot of traction with franchising because we’re gyms and a lot of people work out in our gyms and we have a lot of coaches that have coached in our gyms and those people have opened gyms, Industrious gyms, and they’ve had success. So we haven’t really needed to go to expos to this point. And they were opening so fast initially that I couldn’t keep up with it anyway. That’s a good problem to have. Exactly. But now we’re getting a little bit more of our feet on the ground, everybody, and the brand is thriving and our franchisees are growing and crushing it and now I’ve got a little bit more time to go out and spread the word.

Awesome. That’s a good reason to be here. I think you’re in the right place. Tell me more about the brand. What makes it stand out in what can be a crowded field?

Yeah, fitness is extremely high. In short, what makes industry stand out and our key differentiating factor is our halo system is what it’s called. What it is, it’s an individual workout station in the context of group fitness. If you picture if you’ve ever been to a yoga studio, you have a mat and you just are on that mat, that’s your station and you stretch there the whole time. We are the same but for functional fitness. What does that mean? That means your station includes a treadmill, it includes a rowing machine, it includes a bike, it includes a rogue squat rack from Rogue Fitness where we can lift extremely heavy weights, barbells with a pull up bar and a full set of Olympic weights and a bench, all the stuff that you need to train like an athlete and do really hard stuff, that’s in your station and that’s where you’re at during the whole hour in one of our gyms and within that hour we take care of literally everything from your warm up all the way to teaching you how to do these lifts and these movements to coaching you through your strength piece and then coaching you through the high intensity finishing aspect of the workout, which is a high intensity piece that lasts anywhere between 10 and 25 minutes, depending on the workout.

And very heavy on coaching, it sounds like.

Very heavy on coaching.

So very much not a do-it-yourself kind of place.

Not a do-it-yourself, yeah. And we certify and train all of our coaches and owners and managers in-house. They’re all extremely good and they have to know these movements and how to, more importantly, how to get other people to do these movements really well and want to do these movements.

Very good. So if someone would like to talk to you about the opportunity, where can they reach you? Website or email, however you want to be contacted?

Yep, exactly. Just go to workhardlivfit.com and you’ll get all the information right there. It’s right in front of you. Just click the owner franchise link and off you go. You’ll get all the goods.

workhardlivfit.com. Love that address.

That’s it. That’s it.

All right, terrific. Stephen, thank you so much for joining us here in the Podcast Zone. Have a great rest of the show here at Franchise Expo South.

Thanks, Jack.

Thanks to all of today’s guests, and a special thanks to MFV Expositions for hosting us at Franchise Expo South. Thanks also to today’s sponsors, AnswerConnect and Thunderly. And thanks to you for listening, telling a friend about us, and staying connected on the Social Geek Radio Network.