A Scoop Soldiers franchisee's first year: $900k and 1,100 clients

Q: Is buying a franchise territory better than starting independently?

A built territory delivers route density and revenue on day one for a $61k-111k investment, versus years of hand-assembled growth; independents keep the royalties instead.

Q: What does pet waste removal cost customers?

Ryan McCoy's numbers imply roughly $800 per client per year, about $68 monthly, consistent with weekly-service pricing across the industry.

Every franchise system in this database, Scoop Soldiers, Augusta, 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, is really two stories, and the second one rarely gets told. The founder's story sells the system. The franchisee's story is the system's proof. Ryan McCoy is the proof, and his path is more specific than "bought a franchise." After a long career in restaurants he joined Scoop Soldiers’ corporate team in 2017 as the first manager of its Dallas market. He ran that market as an employee for two years, and when the company began awarding franchises in 2019 he bought the territory he already knew. Within a year of taking it over he was running more than 1,100 clients and over $900,000 in revenue.

The detail that matters most is what he bought. Scoop Soldiers' model, as co-founder EJ McCoy describes it, is to build territories corporately first, stocking them with routes, customers, and revenue, then sell them as operating businesses rather than empty maps. Ryan bought a running machine he had personally been running, which removes most of the risk a franchisee normally carries: he already knew the routes, the customers, and the staffing. Few buyers get that, and it is worth holding in mind before treating the year-one number as a template.

The founder's story sells the system. The franchisee's numbers are the proof. Why this entry exists

Restaurants to routes, deliberately

The career trade reads odd until the operations are compared. Restaurants: perishable inventory, no recurring revenue, brutal hours, single-digit margins on a good month, and this database's official designation of "exciting," which is not a compliment. A frequency-based waste route: subscription revenue that renews weekly by biology, no inventory, daylight hours, and demand that has never once read a restaurant review. For an operator whose skill is running crews and schedules, the route is the same job with the failure modes removed.

What happened next

The year-one figure is where most coverage stops. It should not. McCoy later merged with another owner and, by 2026, was operating roughly 30 trucks across three major markets, making him a multi-unit operator rather than a single-territory franchisee. The lever he credits is unglamorous and familiar to every entry in this category: recruiting, and being known locally.

What the year-one number teaches

$900,000 with 1,100 clients works out to roughly $800 per client per year, about $68 a month, the going rate for never thinking about the yard again. The lesson for readers weighing the category: the franchise fee, $61,000 to $111,000 in Scoop Soldiers' case, is buying route density on day one, the asset every independent operator in this ledger spent years assembling by hand.

Common questions

How much does a Scoop Soldiers franchise make?

The documented case: Ryan McCoy reached over $900,000 with 1,100-plus clients within a year of buying the Dallas territory, which he had spent two years managing as a corporate employee first. Results vary by territory maturity, and few franchisees start with that much inside knowledge.

Is buying a franchise territory better than starting independently?

It is a trade: $61,000 to $111,000 buys the route density independents in this database spent years assembling, at the price of ongoing royalties and someone else's rules. The founders here mostly went independent; the fastest documented year-one belongs to the franchisee.

What does pet waste removal cost customers?

His numbers imply about $800 per client per year, roughly $68 a month for weekly service, the going rate for never thinking about the yard again. Frequency tiers above and below move the figure.

A note on the entry

An earlier version of this entry placed McCoy in "Texas" generally and did not mention that he had managed the Dallas market as a Scoop Soldiers employee from 2017 before buying it in 2019, which materially changes how transferable his year-one result is. We have corrected it and added his subsequent expansion to roughly 30 trucks across three markets. McCoy shares a surname with Scoop Soldiers co-founder EJ McCoy; no source we found states a family relationship, and we make no claim either way.

The territory taker