Franchise Success: Kitchen Solvers

For Suzie Crowley, a Kitchen Solvers franchisee for 21 years, meeting new people and helping them achieve their dream kitchen is the best part of the job. She never grows tired of it.

She and her husband, Brian, live in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and have watched their business grow by leaps and bounds.

“We stay very busy. We’ve increased our business every year since we started and were No. 2 in sales last year among all the franchises,” she said.

The couple has a good system worked out. “I do all the sales and the ordering and accounting,” she said. “I love to help people get the kitchen of their dreams within their budget. We don’t cut corners. We strive to give outstanding customer service. We have never had a dissatisfied customer and always treat people the way we want to be treated.”

Her husband does the installations and project management. And their youngest son is now getting involved in the family business.

“He’s designing kitchens for us. We have great teamwork here,” she said.

Working within people’s budgets to help them get the kitchen they’ve always wanted is meaningful to the Crowleys. Kitchen Solvers works with clients to ensure they are getting quality materials and a remodeled kitchen that works for them and stays within their budgets.

“Sometimes people are on a budget and don’t realize they can reface their cabinets instead of replacing them,” she said. “We work within their budget and can put a beautiful new surface on their cabinets. If they have oak and don’t like it, for instance, we can cover it with hickory or birch. It looks like completely new cabinets.”

Functionality is very important for the modern, time-challenged family, of course. Kitchens have to be more efficient these days, she said, while also being the comfortable gathering place that families will always embrace and expect.

“People spend lots of time in their kitchens,” she said. “Older homes often have kitchens that are very small. We can make the space work for people. We can make things more functional, for instance, by adding pullout shelves, garbage can pullouts and built-in spice racks. We also can extend the cabinets to the ceiling to create more usable space.”

Since 1982, Kitchen Solvers has specialized in cabinet refacing, custom kitchen cabinets, countertops, tile and more. Kitchen Solvers has more than 40,000 beautifully remodeled kitchens under its tool belt and lots of franchisees who are helpful and ready to work with customers.