Home Clean Heroes Hopes for a ‘Tidy Profit’ in New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS – New service-based franchises Home Clean Heroes and Pool Scouts – both owned by the Virginia Beach-based Buzz Franchise Brands – are looking for franchisees in the New Orleans area as part of an aggressive national expansion plan. After growing the Mosquito Joe pest control franchise to 288 operating units and then selling it, Buzz is hoping to reproduce that success with franchises aimed at cleaning houses and pools.

Joe Delatte, Home Clean Heroes president and New Orleans native, said the number of service-based franchises is growing for a number of reasons.

“The trend is really driven by demand,” he said. “And the demand is working from both sides of the demographic spectrum. First of all, our society is aging – and [older people] are at that stage of life where they can afford to pay for services in their home. Then the whole millennial culture is that they want to have this kind of work done for them. They don’t want to be spending time cleaning their house. They’d rather spend time doing other things.”

Delatte said that New Orleans, in particular, checks several boxes he looks for when considering potential markets. And not just the fact that he used to live in the Irish Channel.

“We target homes and territories where the average household income is a hundred thousand plus and and there is a good population within New Orleans of that particular demographic,” he said. “70 percent of that segment will use a residential cleaning company.”

Other key factors: the availability of a labor force and population density.

“One thing that’s important in this business is our route efficiency,” he said. “Being able to serve a number of houses without spending a whole lot of time driving between them. A market that wouldn’t be good is one that’s so spread out that you spend a half hour or more driving between jobs.”

Delatte said the company breaks down franchisee territories into areas with about 40,000 households. So he estimates there are three or four of them in the New Orleans market. 

Potential franchisees will invest somewhere between $83,000 to $137,000 to start their business. That’s typically much less than the cost to open a brick-and-mortar franchise. McDonald’s, for instance, requires almost $1 million to get started. Pinkberry could be anywhere from $300,000 to $600,000. 

The initial investment will pay for the franchise fee (currently being discounted), branded vehicles, rent, insurance, marketing and other essentials to get up and running. Once in business, franchise owners will have predictable revenue from clients who schedule services every week or every other week.

“Home Clean Heroes is a low investment [with a strong] revenue model,” he said. “So with a residential cleaning business, not only is it in demand, but it’s a frequently recurring, predictable revenue stream. Most of our customers are weekly or biweekly and you can look out over your schedule and know exactly how much revenue you have in your pipeline. As long as you serve those customers well and you’re reliable and you are professional then there’ll be loyal customers for a long time. So you build a business and it just incrementally grows.”