Brian Beers Rolled Up 30 Midas Shops Into a $36M Franchise Portfolio

The Setup Brian Beers and his brother did not start with a platform thesis or a fund. They started with a question most searchers skip past: what happens to the guy who owns one Midas shop, has run it for 30 years, and wants to retire? The answer, they found, was that he often could not sell it. The cash flow was too modest for private equity. The business was too unglamorous for most self-funded searchers chasing software margins. The location was usually profitable, branded, and running, but stuck. That gap became the entire strategy. The Deal The Beers brothers bought their first Midas location in 2016. From there, every deal followed a similar shape: one shop, one owner, one conversation. They did not try to assemble a multi-unit package on day one. They learned the brand from the inside first, then used that credibility to approach the next seller. Financing leaned heavily on the sellers themselves. Retiring franchisees, many of whom had paid off their real estate and equipment, were willing to carry notes for buyers who understood the Midas system and could pass the franchisor's approval. That seller paper dropped the equity check per deal and let the portfolio compound faster than a pure SBA or bank stack would have allowed. Operating Moves The consolidation logic is unglamorous and effective: - Centralize the back office once, then bolt new shops onto it. Accounting, payroll, HR, marketing, and purchasing move off the shop manager's desk. - Run each shop as a P&L with a store-level operator, not as an absentee asset. The manager keeps customer relationships and technician retention intact through the transition. - Keep the Midas brand doing the top-of-funnel work. National advertising, warranty programs, and parts supply are already paid for inside the franchise fee. - Buy in the same brand family so managers, systems, vendors, and KPIs translate across every new unit. The multi-unit model also flips the labor math. A single shop cannot justify a full-time recruiter, fleet manager, or regional operations lead. Thirty shops can. Operating Lessons - Modest cash flow is a feature, not a bug, when nobody else is bidding. Shops doing a few hundred thousand in SDE are invisible to PE and often too small for the traditional search fund mandate. That is exactly where sellers need a credible buyer. - Seller financing scales with reputation inside a franchise system. Every clean close makes the next retiree more willing to carry paper. - The franchisor is a gatekeeper and an ally. Approval to hold multiple units is the real unlock; treat the relationship as a strategic asset, not a compliance task. - Legacy franchises (tire, muffler, quick lube, paint) have aging owner bases and functional unit economics. The demographic wave is doing half the sourcing work. - Do not skip the first shop. Operating one unit teaches the cost structure, the labor model, and the customer that no diligence binder will.