Guerrilla Franchising

09/22/2026

Most franchise filings show you what a studio sells, then go quiet on what the owner keeps.

One boutique Pilates brand does the opposite. It prints the profit, right there in the 2026 filing.

New Zorzee Report lands this afternoon:

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09/08/2026

Indoor cycling is shrinking.

It's down 33.5% since 2019 (SFIA).

HIIT is also shrinking.

But one boutique workout is booming.

And its up nearly 40%.

It also happens to be the most-booked workout on ClassPass, 3 years running.

Today I send the map. Free:

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08/18/2026

Everybody's chasing the loudest chicken brands right now. The most interesting one in the category is forty years old and just changed hands.

It does something the viral names won't: it prints what an average store sells, $1,114,233 (Item 19). A real number, from a real sample, one you can actually model.

Then it prints the part nobody markets. More than half its stores sell less than that average (Item 19).

New private-equity money just arrived to fix that. The bull case is a turnaround. The bear case is that new owners buy to sell, and the levers that raise a resale price land on the franchisee (Item 6, Item 17).

The brand that shows you the most honest number is the one nobody's hyping. Read that twice. Part 3 of 4, link below. 👇

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08/04/2026

Three reasons a no-location business carries different first-year risk than a retail one.

Reason one. No fixed commitment before proof. A build out and a multi-year lease get signed before you know whether you can sell. A vehicle and a storage unit don't.

Reason two. No permit timeline. In retail, an inspector decides when you're allowed to earn revenue. Without a location, you can be selling in weeks.

Reason three. Costs land after the sale, not before it. The significant spending happens once a customer has committed, which means slow months cost you far less than they cost a business paying rent.

What you trade for it. No building doing any of the selling. No signage, no walk-in traffic, no showroom to close in. Everything depends on your ability to sell in someone's living room.

Who should skip it. Anybody who specifically wants a location with their name on it. That's a legitimate thing to want and this isn't it.

If it's not a dealbreaker, reply with your market and I'll tell you what's open.

08/04/2026

Three hot chicken brands. Same category. Same year.

Ask each one what a store makes.

One shows you a full P&L.

One shows you a single number.

One shows you nothing at all. Legal. Their choice (Item 19).

The one that shows you nothing is the one everybody wants.

Which one is it? That's the read. Part 1 of 4.

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08/03/2026

Who this isn't for:

Anyone who wants to write a check and stay out of it. You're in homes, at kitchen tables.

Anyone who wants their name on a building. There's no storefront.

Anyone who needs a hundred franchisees first. Company's decades old, franchising is new. Fair reason to pass.

Who it is for:

Good with people in their own homes. Runs the system instead of rewriting it. Building something, not buying a job.

Around $350K net worth, $100K liquid.

Small group. On purpose.

If that's you, reply with your city and I'll tell you what's open.

08/02/2026

Most people pick a franchise by industry. That's backwards, and it's why so many of them end up in something that doesn't fit how they want to work.

The industry is the last thing that matters. What matters is the shape of your week and where the risk sits.

So here's a business described the way I think it should be described. No category name, on purpose.

No storefront, so no showroom, no build out, and no personal guarantee on ten years of retail rent. No install crew on payroll at launch, because that work is subcontracted until volume justifies hiring. And your phone gets answered by a sales center that takes the calls, follows up, and books appointments onto your calendar.

Big-ticket sale, made in the customer's home, one visit, one decision maker. The same customer can buy more than once on that visit because the company handles more of the property than its competitors do.

In business since 2000. First year franchising. About $350,000 net worth, $100,000 liquid.

You'll notice I still haven't told you what it sells. If you're interested anyway, that's the point.

Reply with your market and I'll tell you what's open.

07/23/2026

In case you missed yesterday's issue on F45, here's the detail that stuck with readers.

Across the three boutique fitness filings I read this month, one had no litigation disclosed at all, one had a single arbitration from 2017, and F45's ran to nine matters.

Volume by itself isn't damning. Bigger systems draw more disputes, and F45 has denied the allegations with nothing proven in court. But several of those matters come from franchisees making the same kind of claim about how the franchise was sold to them, and that's worth understanding before you talk to anyone.

The full read is in yesterday's issue. Free to read when you subscribe:

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07/21/2026

Today's issue closes out the boutique fitness series with the biggest of the three brands: F45.

Here's what its 2026 filing shows.

The royalty is the greater of 7% of sales or a fixed monthly minimum. Once sales drop below a certain line, the minimum takes over and the share coming off the top climbs the further you fall.

The franchisor terminated 54 franchise agreements last year while opening 26. The litigation section runs nine matters deep.

F45 is a real brand with real programming, and plenty of operators do well with it. But its structure puts more of the fixed cost on the operator's side of the table than either of the other two, and the filing shows what happened to the operators who couldn't carry it.

Part 4 of 4. Free, no franchisor money, just the numbers.

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07/14/2026

The newcomer in the boutique fitness series is Sweat440, and it does something the bigger brands won't.

It prints a full profit-and-loss for every studio, top to bottom.

The top group keeps 31 cents on every dollar. The bottom group loses six figures (Item 19). Same brand, same year.

Most franchises show you sales and stop.

Sweat440 shows you exactly what a winning studio keeps and what a losing one costs, so you can tell which one you'd be before you sign.

Today's Zorzee Report reads the whole filing. Part 3 of 4. Free, no franchisor money.

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