Within the early 2000s, Sal Longo was an 18-year-old pupil working as a weekend supply man for a daycare’s lone bounce home, which he rented out as a facet hustle. By his early 20s, he’d taken the reins and turned his small facet hustle right into a profitable seasonal enterprise. However after a tough pivot in the course of the pandemic, Longo led his firm, Busy Bee Jumpers, to turn out to be a thriving skilled franchise operation targeted on high-margin core leases — bounce homes, water slides, impediment programs and tents — delivered with a tech-tight, community-driven playbook.
On this Q&A, Longo walks by the college-to-ownership handoff, the “simplify the menu” pivot to core stock and why franchising beats including company items.
Responses have been edited for size and readability.
How did Busy Bee first come about and what was your authentic imaginative and prescient once you have been operating it as a facet hustle?
My enterprise companions again then owned two daycares. They purchased a bounce home for the daycare and all of the mother and father began asking to hire it. Somebody needed to do deliveries; that is the place I got here in at 18. It was an amazing secondary enterprise for them for a number of years. After I graduated from faculty at 22, I requested, Can we put a essential give attention to this and go from a facet hustle to one thing greater? They stated sure. On the time, this was 2006–2007, we have been doing about $200,000 to $250,000 in income and we expanded the supply space and put actual give attention to it.
Did you understand the potential that early?
I did. On my first supply, there have been three little youngsters leaping up and down with pure pleasure and the mother and father have been so completely happy they tipped me. I believed, This feels completely different — we’re creating reminiscences for households. We expanded to colleges, municipalities, church buildings and fireplace and police departments. There wasn’t a lot construction or know-how within the business then, so I constructed an e-commerce web site for BusyBeeJumpers.com and the primary yr we made it a full focus, we grew to $750,000 — a couple of half-million improve — and realized so much.
Your flagship location continues to develop quickly. What selections enabled you to scale like that?
COVID was a tragedy. By way of enterprise, it gave me a whole lot of readability. On the time, I used to be doing about $3 million, however I used to be servicing all kinds of purchasers: company occasions, ice cream vans, mechanical rides, film nights — flashy items of kit that weren’t producing robust returns. They have been elevating my insurance coverage premiums, exhausting my workforce and delivering low margins. The actual cash was in bounce homes, water slides, impediment programs and tents. So I liquidated the extras. It was like simplifying the menu at a restaurant: as soon as we targeted, we scaled a lot quicker. We did $5.5 million in 2024 and we’re on tempo for $7 million in 2025 as a result of we doubled down on the high-margin items folks really need.
So, it sounds such as you went ‘again to fundamentals.’ What was the toughest a part of making that pivot?
I liquidated some costly objects for pennies on the greenback. However since that 2020 pivot, we have greater than doubled our margins. We additionally applied routing know-how tied to product utilization in our working platform. It is made us wildly environment friendly.
Did you’ve got any moments alongside the way in which the place you had doubts?
Truthfully, I believed on this enterprise from day one. It is my ardour. I battle to go away the workplace as a result of I like being right here — we’re creating reminiscences. I’ve labored different jobs in highschool and faculty; nothing grabbed me like this. And it isn’t nearly my household. I’ve constructed a staff of 13 managers who’ve been with me over 10 years. I’ve watched them have youngsters and purchase houses. Final month I rewarded seven of them with firm autos, tied to this new franchising push, as a result of our first three franchises have had a ton of success.
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Why franchise? You definitely might have stayed company and opened extra firm places.
Simplifying the stock and the processes gave us an actual blueprint to scale. My alternative was to pour a whole lot of capital right into a second, third, fourth company location — or promote the blueprint, coach franchisees and take a small royalty. Franchising is less expensive and fewer capital-intensive. As soon as I began speaking about it, my first purchaser was my CFO of 15 years — she owns her personal accounting agency — and she or he purchased Cape Cod. That was an enormous praise. The second was the CEO of the insurance coverage firm that handles our legal responsibility, autos and employees’ comp; he purchased a franchise for his son. He’d seen our ‘no loss runs’ over 27 years — tremendous secure, no employees’ comp claims — and after touring our facility, he noticed the potential.
What makes the Busy Bee supply stand out for franchisees — is it tech, ops, margins?
It is a mix. This can be a fractured, fragmented market. Busy Bee can arrange and legitimize it. Our working platform tied to our product line is simple to scale. And our advertising and marketing applications goal the tip consumer, so buyer acquisition is not an exorbitant capsule to swallow. It actually comes all the way down to operations, coaching and advertising and marketing collectively — that is what makes it distinctive.”
What’s been the largest problem in shifting from a dominant native operator to a franchise system?
Documenting the whole lot. My in-house staff has nice instinct from years collectively; they’ll deal with something. Now the query is: how will we give franchisees that very same toolkit so solutions are at their fingertips? That is what we have realized within the first six months — and why we can’t develop too quick. We wish the primary three to be hyper-successful and the subsequent 5 to have fast wins out of the gate.
What’s your long-term imaginative and prescient — and what sort of franchisees do you need to entice?
We’re searching for individuals who match the Busy Bee tradition: gritty, hard-working operators who’re actually invested within the model. Sure, it is advisable be capitalized — however we wish group companions who will work with fireplace and police departments and recreation groups; individuals who be a part of the native Chamber, go to city conferences and turn out to be a useful resource. The best proprietor is not afraid to roll up their sleeves and run a supply if wanted. That mindset is what set our first three up for fulfillment and it is what we’re searching for as we develop.
Within the early 2000s, Sal Longo was an 18-year-old pupil working as a weekend supply man for a daycare’s lone bounce home, which he rented out as a facet hustle. By his early 20s, he’d taken the reins and turned his small facet hustle right into a profitable seasonal enterprise. However after a tough pivot in the course of the pandemic, Longo led his firm, Busy Bee Jumpers, to turn out to be a thriving skilled franchise operation targeted on high-margin core leases — bounce homes, water slides, impediment programs and tents — delivered with a tech-tight, community-driven playbook.
On this Q&A, Longo walks by the college-to-ownership handoff, the “simplify the menu” pivot to core stock and why franchising beats including company items.
Responses have been edited for size and readability.
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