To Mr. Business,

I have heard the opposite that janiking is actually bidding very low. To the point people are making less than minimum wage. But what is worse they steal peoples accounts.This is Fraud or like a recent Judge said " A Modified Ponzi Scheme" If you go to Bluemaumau.org and read a recent article on cleaning franchisors you can read what Attorney Richard Solomon posted.

Richard Solomon
" an excellent example of a bozo franchise that I have vetted for over a dozen investors. Not one of my clients bought one of these fanchises.

The story of janitorial franchising is that they are sold with a promise of a guaranteed initial inventory of building maintenance contracts so that you start out "making money". Most of the time these deals either don't produce even enough start up revenue to enable you to do the work and also go out and scout up your own additional building maintenance accounts, or if they are good accounts they are soon taken from you and given to another new franchisee.

It is easy to take a building account from a janitorial franchisee. The rep goes to see the account and tells them that they have conducted a follow up inspection of the work you have been doing and have found it to be less than proper. They will happpily replace you with a better operator to assure their total satisfaction with the service. The building manager signs off on your being fired and you are toast in that account and in any other account of that building management organization. These franchiors typically lack sufficient actual on hand accounts to provide a start up customer base for new franchisees signed on. So they just go take buildings away from recently signed franchisees and give them to the newbies.

Even in the best of situations the ability to go get a building janitorial account on your own is nothing like you are told in training or on "discovery day".

You always end up doing toilets yourself because you lack funds to hire help. Often your wife and kids are doing toilets with you to try to get it going.

This is a perfect segment of franchising where competent pre investment vetting by someone who knows the industry can save you from financial ruin.

I purchased a Jani-King Commercial Cleaning Franchise after reading they were a great franchise opportunity in several franchise magazines.
During my initial meeting with the regional director I expressed concern over the 40% they take off the top of what clients are billed. He told me not to worry as they take all their fees into consideration when giving a cleaning quote to a client.
When they started offerring me contracts I would do the math and tell them there was very little profit in some contracts and absolutely none in others. I was told this was a low profit margin industry and I had to learn to work some "break even" contracts for I would get additional business from those same clients ( floor waxing ).
I accepted some of these contracts since they are only required to offer you the amount of cleaning business you purchased (with the franchise cost ). If you don't accept the accounts they are not required to offer you anymore.
Once I started working accounts, the operations director would go by the account every month to evaluate the franchisee's performance. He would always find something negative to write about to justify taking the account away from the franchisee and reselling it to a new franchisee. So the franchisee ends up losing the original franchise fee and whatever fee he paid for the accounts he was working at hardly no profit.
I later learned this type of scam preys on people who have never been in business for themselves - so trust the Franchisor. If anyone is looking into purchasing this type of franchise, do yourself a favor and run a Google or Yahoo search on Jani-King. They have had numerous lawsuits and government complaints. I lost all my savings, but hopefully others can learn from my mistake.

I owned my own janitorial service for years; and have been viewing the JaniKing system for nearly a week, now.
I can argue both sides of this thing, from my standpoint:
1) The past:
In year one, I made $9, 000 after expenses. I had to work a day job AND clean at night. Many trips to the grocery store included decisions between milk & cereal because we could not afford both.
In year two, I made $16, 500. I still had to work a part-time day job; but we were making it work!
In year three, I landed some substantial one-time contracts (construction clean-up) that gave me room to do mass-mailings, and afforded me the opportunity to quit my day job in order follow up on the mailings with phoning & direct cold calls. These worked, and I was on my way; so, that year, I made nearly $50, 000. It took me being listed in the phone book with a professionally designed ad($2600/yr), doing mass-mailers 2x a year ($6400/yr), handling customer complaints in the morning, doing prospecting in the afternoons, doing supplies in the early evening, cleaning & floor work at night... All 7 days of the week.
In year four, I chopped my profits back to $30, 000 by taking on a manager & a little more growth - but I still averaged 130 hours a week of work.
In year five, despite being at nearly $100, 00 for the year, I gave up my business because it was sucking the life out of my marriage & keeping me away from my kids (and, most days, I'm comfortable with choosing the marriage over the $$$... LOL)

JaniKing:
It is true: I do NOT see JaniKing allowing somebody to rocket to $100, 000/yr in a 5-year period. HOWEVER: Their bids are actually a little above the market. Their system also keeps those who are willing to work, just the same as I did on my own, the chance to NOT work 2 & 3 jobs just to survive those first couple of years- as so many upstarts must - and it does allow for a pattern of growth. As for the lawsuits, it is an unfortunate truth in life that anything that is systematic & has an exchange of monitary value will, eventually, have somebody exploit it; but they seem to have a proper documentation system in place for how you are to do things & what their policies will be.