Filta Franchise Owner Cameron Hill on Buying an Existing Business

Cameron Hill’s path to franchise ownership grew out of the varied career he had built in Gadsden, Alabama. He had spent years trading securities and commodities while picking up experience in sales, marketing and skilled trades. That range of experience gave him plenty of practical skills, but Hill wanted to put them to work in a business he controlled.

The opportunity that eventually caught his attention was an existing Filta Environmental Kitchen Solutions operation. Filta provides fryer management and cooking oil services to commercial kitchens, giving franchise owners a specialized business-to-business service model.

Hill had no previous connection to the brand, and the opportunity surfaced while he was working on an unrelated project.

“It was just circumstance that I was rebuilding the gas station where the previous owner walked in and was talking about how he wanted to sell,” Hill said. “I had never even heard of the brand or thought of the opportunity of being able to buy a new franchise.”

Buying an existing business

Hill took a closer look before deciding to move forward. He went through the operation’s profit and loss statements and books to get a sense of what the business was worth. Taking over an established operation also meant he would have customers from the start, all within a market he had known his entire life.

As Hill learned more about Filta, he became interested in the niche the company occupied. He saw relatively little direct competition in his territory and liked that other service providers could sometimes complement Filta’s work instead of competing for the same business.

The opportunity also gave Hill a way to make use of the experience he had accumulated across very different jobs. For him, ownership meant having greater control over where those skills could take him.

“Franchising as a whole came from all of my different background experiences and doing different jobs, obtaining different skills, but having to play by everybody else’s rule book,” Hill said. “You don’t really get that freedom to grow without ownership.”

With the resale, Hill could pursue that independence without spending months building a customer base from nothing.

Early ownership experience

Active routes and established customer relationships came with the operation. Hill’s early work has centered on keeping that business while learning the service side himself.

He has never missed a scheduled service since taking over, he said, although some jobs initially took him longer than they had taken the previous owner. Hill told customers to expect that while he gained experience, he has also chosen to spend more time cleaning when he believes a job requires it.

Those day-to-day interactions have given Hill room to build his own relationships with customers who were used to dealing with someone else.

“I’ll go out of my way to help someone and not make money just because I’m in the position to be able to do that,” Hill said. “Then I can retain the customer relationship, basically. I’ll approach it from that strategy. I haven’t had any issues with any previous customers at all.”

The transition has also required Hill to learn much of the business by doing it. He is handling nearly every function himself while training another worker, putting the management lessons he learned through Filta into practice as situations arise in the field.

Local market growth

Hill’s familiarity with Northeast Alabama is becoming more important as he focuses on adding accounts. He grew up in East Gadsden and has spent his life in the area, giving him firsthand insight into how business relationships develop in the community.

The geography presents its own challenge. Hill’s territory is largely rural, so he cannot build a route around a small, densely packed area. Prospective customers are spread across the region, making each account important to the operation's economics.

Hill has already made his first sale, completing a site evaluation for a Honda manufacturing plant after the facility contacted him. The experience also showed him how different selling in his home market can be from following a standardized pitch.

“If you come in with this super-articulate sales pitch that you can tell has been repeatable, you’re just going to get kicked out,” Hill said. “A lot of it’s just going to have to be doing the right thing by everyone. Every single customer matters in my territory.”

Hill’s next benchmark is building enough financial stability to grow his team. Within two years, he wants to eliminate the debt he took on to acquire the franchise and have at least two employees sharing the workload.

The resale gave Hill a running business from day one. Now he has the chance to see how far he can grow it in a market where the customers, communities and way of doing business were already familiar long before Filta entered the picture.