Should I hire a franchise or a local garage floor coating company?

A franchised coating company is two businesses stacked on top of each other. There is the brand, which sells territories, and there is the operator, who bought one. The operator pays an upfront fee to own your zip code, then pays a royalty on every dollar of revenue, then pays into a national advertising fund on top of that. Franchise disclosure documents across the home services category describe royalties in the mid single digits and ad fund contributions of a point or two, with entry fees well into five figures. None of that money buys grinder time on your slab. It buys the name and the lead flow that comes with the name.

The lead flow usually starts at a call center. You dial a number you saw on a truck or a search ad, and the person who answers is not in your city and will not be at your house. They book an in-home appointment and route it to whoever owns the territory. A commissioned salesperson arrives with a sample board, a tablet, and a price that is good today. That person is paid on closed revenue, not on how the floor looks in year four. The crew that grinds your concrete is a separate group of people you have not met and cannot question before you sign the contract.

Read the warranty document, not the yard sign. Across the category, coating warranties are typically written by the local operating entity, not by the national brand, even when the brand name sits at the top of the page. That distinction does not matter while the operator is open. It matters a great deal when the operator sells the territory, closes it, or loses the franchise agreement for missing system standards. Territories change hands. Franchisees exit. When that happens your claim goes to a new owner who did not do your job, did not price your job, and did not collect your money. Some new owners honor prior work for reputation reasons. Some do not, and nothing in the document requires them to.

Then read the exclusions. Warranties across the category typically exclude moisture coming up through the slab, hot tire pickup, chemical staining, impact damage, and anything the document calls owner abuse. Many exclude labor and cover only the material, which means a covered failure still costs you a full teardown and reinstall out of pocket. Many require a registration card returned within thirty days. Many require a transfer fee and paperwork when you sell the house. Every one of those clauses is a place where a claim can quietly die. Ask for the full document before the salesperson leaves. If the answer is that the office will email it later, you do not have a warranty yet.

Here is our price, in public, before anyone comes to your house. A standard two-car garage is 440 square feet. Slabbr One runs $6 per square foot, which is $2,650. Slabbr Prime runs $8 per square foot, which is $3,520, and it adds a moisture vapor barrier and a flexible polyaspartic base. Slabbr Ironclad runs $10 per square foot, which is $4,400, and it is full polyaspartic. If a failed coating is on the slab now, removal is $1.50 per square foot, about $660 on a two-car garage, and it adds a half day to the schedule. Those numbers do not change because you hesitated, and they do not change because you live in Celina instead of Burleson.

Compare that to the quote structure you get from a commissioned in-home visit. You will not know the rate per square foot. You will get one bundled number for a package with a name, a discount that expires when the salesperson stands up, and a payment quoted per month instead of a total. That is a pricing method built to hide the rate, and it works. When you do not know what a square foot costs, you cannot tell whether you are paying for polyaspartic or for a royalty. Ask every company you talk to for the rate per square foot on the exact build they are quoting. Any shop that will not give you that number has told you something.

What that price includes, on every job, at every tier. Diamond grinding with HEPA extraction. We never acid etch. A moisture read before a drop of product goes down. Crack repair with rigid polymer at no charge. One day install, walk it at 24 hours, park on it at 72. A lifetime residential warranty that attaches to the job, not to a registration card and not to a transfer form. Sell the house and the warranty stays with the floor. The balance is not due until the floor is installed and you have walked it. There is no commissioned salesperson in that transaction and no travel premium anywhere in DFW.