SWEEP. INSPECT. TRUST.
Franchising with a purpose.
Who is Midtown?
Midtown Chimney Sweeps is a unique franchise opportunity in North America. The company is involved with the hearth industry (the fireplace manufacturing and maintenance industry). Midtown creates value through business systems, chimney sweeping, and related services like dryer vent cleaning, light maintenance, and chimney repairs.
Who We Are.
Almost everyone has a grainy pseudo-color photograph of faded tees and feathered bangs that begs the caption, “Once upon a time.” Our story is no different. It begins with a boy napping in a bathtub of a half-finished house while his father builds the chimney. And a teenager on a roof with his dad looking at a chimney cap and handing him tools. And a young man with his uncle, selling firewood, fireplace, and installing wood-burning stoves. But maybe it started before all that on a farm in California where two people, now great-grandparents, grew alfalfa, passing on their entrepreneurial DNA to their children’s children’s children. Not to mention all of their forebears who had the independent fierceness to endure being “fresh off the boat.”
Midtown Chimney Sweeps, established in 1979, is a tapestry of those lives that have gone before. Byron Schramm, 5th generation entrepreneur, grew Midtown Chimney Sweeps Franchise on the shoulders of his uncle and father’s businesses. The hearth industry is one which they all know well, having installed thousands of wood, pellet and gas hearth appliances.
A bit of a maverick, Byron set out to create a successful chimney sweeping company in a sunshine state. Building a cold-weather type business in California was not a strategic decision, but one that followed the philosophy of blooming where one is planted. To be successful in that climate, the business model was forced to be lean, clean, and have no wasted motions in its operations. Blooming in the California desert requires quite a bit of creativity, a characteristic that still drives our company today.
Spurred on by family members at annual family Christmas gathers, the Midtown Chimney Franchise opened a proof of concept prototype franchise in the Evergreen, Colorado market—a beautiful area located in the foothills of the majestic and cold Colorado Rocky Mountains. A perfect place for the flagship franchise of a national Chimney Sweeping Company.
The Midtown brand was birthed from a deep understanding of the difficulty of running a small business. What is needed for success? Excellence in digital marketing, excellence on the phones, and a comprehensive CRM that matches the skill and code knowledge of the technicians in the field. To compete in such a digitized, brand-hungry market, Midtown Chimney Sweeps set out to organize the labor side of the hearth industry. Criss-crossing North America and having skype calls with Europes leading chimney franchise provided needed data points. Meeting with guilds, industry leaders and national vendors, Midtown Chimney Sweeps is now in 9 states and continues to see stable unit economics from its franchisees. Choosing to put stability rather than haphazard growth first, Midtown Chimney Sweeps Franchise is committed to making decisions for long-term success.
In this not-so-new industry of chimney care, Midtown Chimney Sweeps Franchise is a tech-savvy company that is providing service to customers who seem to create an unrelenting demand for services. Byron continues to bring software and online infrastructure to a small-town industry. Originally focused one helping chimney sweeps to have a centralized scheduling center for dispatch and handling inbound calls, Midtown is now looking for more franchisees who are willing and able to join in the growth of this powerful young brand.
What is next? After building on a foundation of chimney sweeping for the past 4 years, Midtown is now building an infrastructure to prepare for fireplace installation services in a nationwide market. Having regular meetings with industry leaders in the fireplace manufacturing side of the Hearth Patio and Barbeque Association, Midtown is excited to provide a network of qualified installers through its online scheduling platform and call center for fireplace installation.