How Much Does a Surface Experts Franchising LLC Franchise Owner Make?

Annual owner-earnings answer

$25,600–$173,900

A U.S. single-territory Surface Experts owner may generate roughly $25,600 to $173,900 a year in estimated pre-tax owner-operator benefit, with a base scenario of about $72,500. These are independent scenarios anchored to 2025 Gross Revenue reported in the 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document. The franchisor does not report owner profit, EBITDA, Net Income, salary, draw, or distributions.

Evidence mode: C — FDD-anchored scenario Confidence: Limited Format: Mature single-territory location Revenue period: Calendar 2025

Data basis

The evidence is current but incomplete for profit. The current FDD supplies a detailed revenue distribution and recurring-fee rules, while the profit margin and hired-manager wage require external official proxies.

Limited confidence

Legal franchisor

Surface Experts Franchising LLC, a Washington limited liability company.

FDD

2026 U.S. Franchise Disclosure Document, issued April 6, 2026. No matching public FDD hosted on an official franchise-controlled domain was verified, so FDD references are stated by Item and page.

Item 19 status

Official Gross Revenue, revenue-per-job, revenue-per-repair, rent, and cost-of-goods-sold indicators; no direct owner-earnings measure.

Applicable population

75 franchised locations open at least 12 months and operating for the full 2025 reporting year; the earnings model uses only the 66 single-territory locations.

External benchmarks

IRS 2023 nonfarm sole-proprietorship “Miscellaneous repairs” income statements and BLS May 2025 General and Operations Managers wages.

Date checked

July 19, 2026.

Item 19 measures Gross Revenue, not owner earnings. For calendar 2025, the 2026 FDD reports 75 franchised locations that had operated at least 12 months and for the full reporting year. It separates 66 single-territory locations from 9 locations operating two or more territories, so the two populations should not be merged.

For single-territory locations, Item 19 reports quartile revenue ranges and quartile medians. The bottom-quartile median was $250,068.15, while the top-quartile median was $1,072,032.46. The FDD does not state one overall median for all 66 locations. Because the group has 66 observations, the two central observations are the highest value in the third quartile, $543,752.62, and the lowest value in the second quartile, $553,210.73. Their average produces the derived central revenue of $548,481.675, rounded to $548,482. Source: 2026 FDD, Item 19, pp. 36–39.

How representative is the reporting cohort?

The cohort is useful for mature-location revenue, but it does not represent every operating outcome. Item 19 excludes 18 locations opened during 2025 and three locations that closed during 2025. Item 20 reports 103 franchised outlets at year-end and no company-owned outlets. The Item 19 terminology separately describes 93 operating “Franchised Locations” in 103 territories, so location, territory, and outlet counts are not interchangeable. Source: 2026 FDD, Item 19, pp. 35–39; Item 20, pp. 40–45.

The exclusions make the disclosure appropriate for mature-location analysis, but less representative of ramp-up and closure risk. The nine multi-territory operators also show materially different revenue scale and are excluded from the per-unit earnings model rather than divided into an unsupported per-territory result.

The estimate multiplies three FDD revenue anchors by three explicitly labeled net-income margins. Revenue comes from the single-territory Item 19 distribution. The central margin comes from 2023 IRS nonfarm sole-proprietorship income statements for “Miscellaneous repairs,” a broad repair category with $24.438604 billion of business receipts and $3.230813 billion of net income less deficit. That produces a 13.22% aggregate margin.

The IRS category is only a proxy. The U.S. Census Bureau’s NAICS 8114 repair group includes several personal and household repair activities and is broader than mobile interior-surface repair. The margin may therefore overstate or understate Surface Experts economics. To display uncertainty rather than false precision, the model applies a sensitivity band of three percentage points below and above the 13.22% benchmark.

• Conservative: bottom-quartile median Gross Revenue of $250,068.15 multiplied by a 10.22% scenario margin.
• Base: derived central Gross Revenue of $548,481.675 multiplied by the 13.22% IRS benchmark margin.
• Upside: top-quartile median Gross Revenue of $1,072,032.46 multiplied by a 16.22% scenario margin.
• Rounding: calculations use full-precision inputs and are rounded to the nearest $100 for publication.

Interpretation: Revenue dispersion creates more variation than the three-point margin sensitivity. Sources: 2026 FDD, Item 19, pp. 36–39; IRS 2023 nonfarm sole-proprietorship statistics. The IRS margin is an all-in aggregate benchmark, so FDD fees are not subtracted a second time in this chart.

Owner involvement is central because the current offer is not semi-absentee. The 2026 FDD requires the Principal Executive to own at least 50% of the equity, work full-time, participate directly in operations, and devote full-time efforts for at least three years. The business must also hire a full-time Lead Technician and a Business Development person. A separate general manager is allowed, but hiring one does not remove the Principal Executive’s full-time obligation. Source: 2026 FDD, Item 1, p. 4; Item 15, p. 29.

The official Surface Experts U.S. franchise overview describes an executive-led mobile model. The FDD provides the controlling detail for buyer diligence: this is an active executive role, not passive ownership.

What happens if the owner hires a general manager?

A hired manager can absorb most or all of the modeled benefit at lower revenue levels. The BLS May 2025 national median hourly wage for General and Operations Managers was $50.85. Annualizing that wage at 2,080 hours produces a $105,768 wage proxy. This excludes employer payroll taxes and benefits, so the hired-manager residual shown below is optimistic.

Owner-operated benefit Residual after GM wage proxy

Interpretation: At the base scenario, the GM wage proxy exceeds the modeled benefit, before payroll burden. Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. Formula: owner-operator benefit minus $105,768.

The current core fee stack is approximately 12% of Gross Sales plus technology charges, before local payroll and advertising. The royalty is the greater of 8% of Gross Sales or a monthly minimum after the first year. The Support Center fee is 4% of monthly Gross Sales up to $80,000 and 2% above that level. ExpertNet and technology cost $393 to $500 per month. Source: 2026 FDD, Item 6, pp. 6–10.

The resulting $71,818 base-revenue fee illustration excludes the required Business Development employee, Lead Technician payroll, local advertising, vehicle costs, insurance, tools, supplies, accounting, and other operating expenses. It is not subtracted again from the IRS net-margin scenario because that benchmark is already an all-in net-income measure; doing so would risk double counting. The unresolved issue is whether the benchmark’s expense mix adequately reflects this franchise’s fee structure.

The largest uncertainty is the missing same-brand profit statement. Item 19 does not reveal total payroll, vehicle expense, insurance, advertising, bad debt, owner compensation, or operating profit by revenue tier. That prevents a same-brand revenue-to-profit bridge and keeps the confidence rating at Limited.

• Labor structure: technician productivity, sales staffing, wage rates, employee turnover, and the number of additional technicians needed at higher revenue.
• Territory economics: multifamily housing units, customer concentration, travel time, local pricing, repair mix, and sales conversion.
• Expense comparability: whether the IRS “Miscellaneous repairs” margin reflects similar payroll, vehicle usage, franchise fees, and B2B customer acquisition.
• Cohort selection: Item 19 excludes new and closed locations, while the scenario uses mature single-territory observations.
• Financing: debt principal is separate from operating earnings. The FDD gives an example of $37,500 financed at 12% for 36 months, with a $1,245.54 monthly payment, or about $14,946 annually.
• Taxes and owner distributions: personal income tax, entity structure, draws, distributions, and retained earnings are not modeled.

What should a buyer verify before relying on the estimate?

Ask for evidence that converts Item 19 revenue into a complete operating statement. The Federal Trade Commission’s franchise buyer guide explains that Item 19 claims must disclose their basis and limitations and that a prospect may request written substantiation.

• Request the Item 19 written substantiation and reconcile the 75-location Reporting Group to the single-territory and multi-territory tables.
• Interview owners in the bottom, middle, and top revenue tiers about payroll, vehicle fleets, advertising, insurance, write-offs, and owner hours.
• Ask for anonymized profit-and-loss ranges by single-territory revenue tier, including the number of technicians and Business Development employees.
• Confirm whether Gross Revenue reports include all refunds, bad debt, discounts, and customer concentration effects relevant to the planned territory.
• Model financing separately and compare owner-operated economics with the fully loaded cost of a hired general manager.

The strongest defensible range is approximately $25,600 to $173,900 in annual pre-tax owner-operator benefit for a mature single-territory location, with a $72,500 base scenario. It is scenario-based, not official owner profit. The most important driver is the location’s position within the very wide Item 19 Gross Revenue distribution. The largest unresolved uncertainty is the absence of same-brand total operating expenses and owner compensation by revenue tier.

A buyer should verify the Item 19 substantiation, obtain complete profit-and-loss information from franchisees across performance tiers, and separate compensation for full-time owner labor from residual business profit. Any hired-manager model must also reflect that the 2026 FDD still requires the Principal Executive to work full-time during the initial three-year period.