The following new owners attended a weeklong basic training course at the company’s corporate office in May:

• Daryl Albright – Frederick County in Maryland
• Randy and Tami Fitzgerald – Parker County in Texas
• Ruben and Stephanie McCutcheon – Santa Fe County in New Mexico

The Mr. Rooter basic training includes classes on best practices, management and leadership techniques, customer service and marketing.

“We’re excited to expand our Mr. Rooter Plumbing network,” said Mary Kennedy Thompson, president of Mr. Rooter Corporation. “We look forward to helping these new franchisees grow their franchises and provide their communities with professional and customer-focused services.”

Mr. Rooter Plumbing technicians follow an established and professional system. For example, they wear shoe covers to protect a customer’s home or business.

Technicians also give customers the price before work is done to ensure there are no surprises about the cost of service. Mr. Rooter Plumbing provides service 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with no extra charges on nights, weekends and holidays

The following people attended a weeklong basic training course April 19-23 at the company’s corporate office in Waco, Texas:

• Michael and Dawn Pant – Montcalm County in Michigan
• Jamie Smith and Rob Whitley – Baltimore, Maryland
• John and Penny Maxwell – Carter, Sullivan, Washington Counties in Tennessee, and Watauga County in North Carolina.

“We are delighted to help this great group of business people develop their businesses,” said Mary Kennedy Thompson, president of Mr. Rooter Corporation. “It’s nice to grow our Mr. Rooter brand with great individuals who want to provide outstanding customer experiences for their communities.”

Mr. Rooter Plumbing technicians follow an established and professional system. For example, they wear covers over their shoes when inside a customer’s home or business to protect their property.

Technicians also give customers the price before work is done to ensure there are no surprises about the cost of service. Mr. Rooter Plumbing shops provide service 24 hours a day, seven days a week and there are no extra charges on nights, weekends and holidays.

During the week-long trip, they will teach women in Haiti how to test, bag and sell water. But it doesn’t stop there. These companies hope selling water can become a trade for Haitian women.

“We want to give Haitian women the opportunity to have a business that stretches past the rebuilding efforts,” said Mary Kennedy Thompson, president of Mr. Rooter Corporation. “While we want to give them something sustainable, we also want to make sure they have clean water to drink now.”

Thompson says Mr. Rooter Plumbing could not do this without 3M Clean Water Solutions and its engineer Satish Chamyvelumani, who is also on the trip. He brought bags and test kits his company is donating to make this venture possible.

“We are excited to send a 3M Purification Inc. engineer Satish Chamyvelumani, who is part of a 3M technical team that is committed to developing and providing sustainable, affordable solutions to address water quality for regions like Haiti,” said Veena Lakkundi, business leader at 3M Clean Water Solutions.

Once they complete this project, Thompson and Derek Moreland, co-owner of the Mr. Rooter franchise in Toronto, will head to a town north of Port-au-Prince. They will scope out the town’s plumbing challenges.

This “fact finding mission” – as Moreland calls it – is important. On a future trip, a group of Mr. Rooter Plumbing franchisees from across Canada and the United States will lay pipe for the town.

Moreland made the pledge to help Haitians during a leadership meeting in January, as he talked with fellow Mr. Rooter franchisees. He had just heard that some Haitian kids were walking six kilometers for water, and they carried it back in old paint cans.

“We are so lucky to have clean, fresh water – both hot and cold – at our fingertips,” Moreland said. “We really do take it for granted, and we have an opportunity to help people who are really in need.”

Mr. Rooter President, Mary Thompson, was one of only two companies in the top 50 to actually be a veteran herself.  Thompson credits her success to the experience she gained serving as a Marine Corps officer.

There are many reasons veterans are a natural fit into franchising.  They have a fierce work ethic, and will keep going even when the going gets tough.  They are known for being self-disciplined, possess the ability to focus and block out distractions.  Lastly, they have been conditioned to follow directions and adhere to systems.

This combination allows them to overcome the difficult times the franchise goes through, remain focused and dedicated to running a successful business, and they are able to follow the franchises’ time-proven system without costly deviations which is pivotal to their success.

Another reason the Dwyer Group’s franchises were appealing to veterans is the Vetfran program.  The Vetfran program offers veterans a 25% discount on initial territory purchases and other vendor incentives for those who qualify.  The program was established by The Dwyer Group’s founder Don Dwyer to benefit honorably discharged vets after the gulf war.  Since then 360 and veterans are involved in the program and over 1,200 veterans have acquired their own franchise.  It is The Dwyer Group’s way of giving back and thanking veterans for their service and sacrifices.

The following people attended a weeklong basic training course April 19-23 at the company’s corporate office in Waco, Texas:

• Michael and Dawn Pant – Montcalm County in Michigan
• Jamie Smith and Rob Whitley – Baltimore, Maryland
• John and Penny Maxwell – Carter, Sullivan, Washington Counties in Tennessee, and Watauga County in North Carolina.

“We are delighted to help this great group of business people develop their businesses,” said Mary Kennedy Thompson, president of Mr. Rooter Corporation. “It’s nice to grow our Mr. Rooter brand with great individuals who want to provide outstanding customer experiences for their communities.”

Mr. Rooter Plumbing technicians follow an established and professional system. For example, they wear covers over their shoes when inside a customer’s home or business to protect their property.

Technicians also give customers the price before work is done to ensure there are no surprises about the cost of service. Mr. Rooter Plumbing shops provide service 24 hours a day, seven days a week and there are no extra charges on nights, weekends and holidays.

Charlie Hall calls his Mr. Rooter franchise his “redneck enterprise” if that’s the case I guess you could call Charlie Hall “redneck royalty.”  In seven years Charlie has expanded his business from three service vans to seven, five employees to 19, and first year revenue of $700,000 to projected $2 million in 2010.

I know what you’re thinking, Charlie Hall must be quite the plumber, but the truth is most of his professional career has been spent in marketing and sales with Coca-Cola.  In 2003, Hall’s son Nick who worked as a Mr. Rooter technician mentioned that the owner was going to sell.  Hall decided to jump on the opportunity to become a business owner and has never looked back.

Not having any experience in the industry may have been intimidating for many, but Hall did his research and realized the key to making his new business profitable was specialization.

“We needed to get our arms around jetting, and we had to get into excavation, which the former owner had not done.  We also needed to get into pipe lining and pipe bursting” Hall said.

Granted, there were some road blocks at first.  New equipment was needed for these expansions and not having a background in the industry created some initial hurdles.

“I bought a brand-new piece of equipment and of course no one could run it properly.  We were learning as we went along.  It would have been comical, if it wasn’t so important” Hall said.

Hall understood the importance of being a quick learner and swiftly mastered his equipment and moved on to restructuring his staff.  Hall believes in catching people doing things right, “twice a month, a manager will ride along on a job with somebody.”  The purpose of this practice is to acknowledge what technicians are doing right, “positive reinforcement.”

Mr. Rooter’s systems helped make the transition into owning a sewer and drain cleaning business easy for Hall, and they can help make it easy for you as well.  They can help you learn the equipment, crunch the numbers, plan for expansion, restructure employees, and improve your pricing systems.  No prior experience necessary.  There’s a reason they call us Mr.

At Mr. Rooter, we breed a different kind of hero – the hometown hero.  They don’t wear capes, and the service vans don’t go quite as fast as the batmobile, but every year select Mr. Rooter technicians are called upon to step up and become heroes.   From diamonds to ducklings when duty called in 2009 Mr. Rooter was there to answer.

Mike Roberts, general manager of Mr. Rooter of Phoenix came to the rescue of two damsels in distress over the past year.  First he undertook an eight hour rescue mission in a Phoenix restaurant to recover a $70,000 wedding ring a woman had accidentally flushed down the toilet.  He had to search the pipe with video inspection equipment, rip up the floor and battle a deteriorating sewer line to retrieve the ring.

Three months later Roberts’ phone rang again.  This time it was a frantic 24 year-old who had flushed a $6,000 dollar 4.5 carat sapphire ring down the toilet.  After only five minutes of searching he located the ring.  The girl’s father tore up the floor himself and Roberts returned the next day to retrieve the family heirloom.

Jewelry isn’t the only thing that Mr. Rooter can rescue.  George Jessup, from Mr. Rooter Plumbing of Pittsburgh, between service calls one day noticed a duck sitting on a storm drain.  Thinking that was odd, he pulled over and looked down the drain to see trapped baby ducklings.  He knew he had to do something.  After attempting to lift the heavy drain, Jessup called the fire department and within 30 minutes all seven ducklings were safely returned to their mother.  Wanting to double check Jessup got out his video inspection equipment and investigated the pipe just to make sure all the ducklings were safely rescued.

Robert Plantic, a technician at the Mr. Rooter franchise in Toronto solved the mystery of the missing cat.  After two hours of searching for the cat named Karma, Plantic located the feline using his video inspection camera.  Karma had worked her way under the floorboards that the renovators were putting down to cover holes in the customer’s house.

There is a reason they call us Mr., Gerald Johns of the Mr. Rooter franchise in New Orleans helped recover a one carat engagement ring that had slipped off the customer’s finger in her home.  The woman hadn’t wanted to tell her fiancé so John’s arrived quickly, found the ring, and her secret will be safe with Mr. Rooter.

We may not be able to give you a cape.  Our training sessions and systems won’t make you fly, but we can give you the opportunity to be someone’s hero.  Whether it’s rescuing a precious pet, recovering a priceless treasure, or just doing a quality job with a smile at Mr. Rooter you have a chance to make a difference.

This list ranks the top 300 franchise concepts based on a number of criteria including: franchise unit growth rate, availability of franchising, financial strength, system size, Web visibility and total number of years in operation and franchising. AllBusiness.com analyzed more than 800 franchise companies to select the top 300.

This is where the Leading the Service Industry companies were ranked -

Mr. Rooter – 132
Rainbow International – 156
Aire Serv – 164
Glass Doctor – 209
Mr. Appliance – 239
Mr. Electric –  275

“Being recognized on this celebrated list is a testament to the outstanding customer experiences our Mr. Rooter Plumbing franchise owners and their teams provide their communities,” said Mary Kennedy Thompson, president of Mr. Rooter. “We couldn’t be recognized without their hard work day in and day out.”

This is the second annual All Star Franchises list. For complete details on the list, visit AllBusiness.com/allstar-franchises.