From “Dumpster Fire” to Dream System: How Midtown Chimney Sweeps Franchising, LLC Built a Franchise on Vonigo

After struggling with unreliable software, Midtown Chimney Sweeps found in Vonigo a platform stable enough to franchise on and flexible enough to grow with.

The Customer

Founded in 1979, Midtown Chimney Sweeps is a second-generation family business led
by CEO Byron Schramm, whose father started the company. The company has been
franchising for 12 years and has grown to 12 franchise owners operating 28 territories
across 9 states. As the leader of the franchise system, Byron serves as the primary
decision-maker for both technology and operational strategy.

The Challenge

As Midtown Chimeny Sweeps grew its franchise network, it became increasingly dependent on a heavily customized software platform that proved difficult to maintain and prone to failure. The system was so intricately interconnected that a single change in one area could trigger cascading failures elsewhere.

“If one person changed one thing on one side of the spaghetti bowl, it would go all the way over and cause a disruption somewhere else,” Byron recalls. A payment service might go down when a technician’s route was updated. Updates were unpredictable. Outages were a regular occurrence.

“It was kind of like a dumpster fire. You never knew where things got left off, where they got dropped off, if your software was even going to be functioning for the day,” according to Byron.

Managing a multi-location franchise on an unreliable system created operational risk at every level. When the vendor relationship ended, Byron saw it as an opportunity to find something better.

The Solution

After evaluating several vendors, Midtown Chimney Sweeps selected Vonigo as its field service management platform. Byron discovered Vonigo through the franchising network and online search. While the company’s marketing was understated, the onboarding experience quickly built confidence.

Byron credits Vonigo’s implementation team, and the onboarding lead in particular, as instrumental in the decision to move forward.

“He’s probably the most well-spoken, deep-knowledge software person I could even imagine existing on the planet. He just handheld us right through the onboarding process. Truly phenomenal,” Byron says.

The rollout was structured and deliberate. The Vonigo team trained Midtown Chimney Sweep’s corporate staff first. Corporate then trained franchisees, with Byron serving as an internal advocate for the platform to minimize uncertainty across the network. The strategy worked. Franchise owners who had experienced the pain of the old system were receptive to the change, and the transition went smoothly.

“When our franchise owners came on, we did not have them running to the office with pitchforks. They got it,” Byron says.

Key Capabilities

Vonigo’s flexibility and depth of features have been central to how Midtown Chimney Sweeps manages operations across its franchise network, with several capabilities standing out as particularly impactful.

Zone Routing and Pricing Flexibility

One of the most impactful features for Midtown Chimney Sweeps has been Vonigo’s zone routing system. Using a drag-and-drop visual interface that requires no technical knowledge, each franchise owner can define custom service zones by zip code, schedule those zones on specific days of the week, and assign zone-specific pricing. This allows franchisees to account for real-world variables like drive time, tolls, and fuel costs without opening a support ticket or waiting on anyone else.

Byron tested competing platforms, including several handyman-focused routing tools, and found them lacking.

“They’re going to say they have zone routing, they’re going to say they have routing intelligence. What that means is it all dumps on one day, and you get to drag and drop them manually. Excuse me? In the age of AI, we’re not going to have the computer do this? Vonigo’s actually delivering on the promise,” he explains.

Corporate Roll-Up Visibility

Midtown Chimney Sweeps operates a centralized scheduling center that handles all inbound calls, emails, and website inquiries across the franchise system. Vonigo gives corporate full visibility into every location’s revenue, routes, job statuses, and customer communications, while franchisees can only see data within their own territory. This tiered access model gives leadership the oversight it needs without exposing sensitive cross-franchise data.

Corporate can view gross revenue by franchisee in a single screen and drill down three clicks to see service-level detail. When a franchisee’s pricing falls significantly below the brand average, the team can identify it quickly and reach out to coach them.

“We see that they’re bidding jobs at a very low rate, 50% under the brand average… We can quickly take action, get on the phone, and be like, hey, just to let you know, you’re way under brand average… It gives us that coaching opportunity,” Byron shares.

Digital Quotes and Approvals

Before Vonigo, Midtown Chimney Sweep’s technicians delivered handwritten estimates in the field. Now, branded quote approval emails go out automatically, complete with an approve button, digital signature capability, and secure online payment. With Vonigo, customers can review, approve, and pay in a single seamless flow.

“Customers love it. They expect it. This is the age of Amazon and Google and Walmart.com. It should be click to add to cart, it should be easy, and it should publicly display what you’re buying,” Byron says.

Brand Standards Enforcement

Because every franchise location runs on the same platform, Midtown Chimney Sweeps can enforce brand standards network-wide with a single configuration change. When the company decided to require four photos for a specific service type before an invoice could be completed, they turned it on once. It applied to every location instantly, with no additional rollout required.

The Results

Midtown Chimney Sweeps has been on Vonigo for over 10 years. Byron points to several meaningful outcomes as a result of using the software to run his chimney service franchise business:

• Operational stability. The unpredictable outages and cascading failures that plagued the previous system are gone. Updates are pushed without disruption, and the team starts each day confident the platform will be available.
  
• Faster franchisee ramp-up. Using a single platform across the franchise network enables new franchisees to learn from existing users, get answers quickly, and adopt standardized processes. There is no learning curve multiplied across different systems.
  
• Network-wide coaching capability. The roll-up reporting gives Midtown Chimney Sweep’s corporate team real-time visibility into franchisee performance and the data to have informed coaching conversations. Revenue trends, service mix, and pricing anomalies are visible at a glance.
  
• Consistent customer experience. Branded digital quotes, secure payment, and professional communications are standard across every franchise location, reinforcing the brand’s credibility with customers.

What Byron Would Tell Another Franchisor

“Yes, it will work for your franchise system because it recognizes zip code ownership and smart schedule routing.”

Beyond the features, Byron values the relationship. Vonigo’s president personally reached out during the COVID-19 pandemic to share operational best practices gathered from across the company’s hundreds of home service clients, at no charge and without being asked.

“That was them caring and showing interest in our business doing well. Big enough to support, small enough to care,” he says.

After a decade on the platform, Byron is still engaged. He is currently in conversation with Vonigo about upcoming product improvements. “I’m looking forward to making a thing that works, work even better.”