Ask most franchise owners what sold them, and you’ll get a brochure answer. Ask Kevin Dinkel and Seth Johnson, two GrassRoots Turf owners who sat down with Franchise Business Review, and you get something better: two seasoned business people who had already done the hard part, building companies from nothing, and still chose to plant their flag with GrassRoots.
Here’s what they love about it, and what anyone eyeing this opportunity should take away.
Meet the Owners
Kevin Dinkel
has been self-employed for almost his entire working life. He built a home inspection company and a pest control company on his own, no franchisor, no playbook. GrassRoots is his first franchise, which gives him something rare: a real side-by-side read on going it alone versus building inside a system. His verdict leans hard toward the system.
Seth Johnson
came from construction, a business he’d run for years. He first looked at GrassRoots almost as a long-term retirement play, nudged by a client who was a close friend of the founder, Josh. One meeting with the team flipped him from “maybe someday” to “let’s do this.”
Neither had a lawn care background. Both are thriving anyway. That’s kind of the whole point.
The Benefits That Actually Won Them Over
You don’t have to be the expert. Kevin knew how to mow his own grass and little else about lawn treatments. He chose a franchise precisely so he’d get the training and the system instead of guessing his way through. The lesson he had to teach himself, as a lifelong solo operator, was to stop reinventing the wheel: “They have been successful. I’m going to follow what they say.” It worked.
A service center answers the phone for you. This one surprised even the interviewer. GrassRoots runs a centralized service center that fields calls and quotes yards, so a single owner with a single truck can launch without worrying about who’s covering the office. It also filters out the tire-kickers, the people collecting a dozen estimates with no intent to buy, so owners spend their time on real customers. Seth called this one of his main reasons for buying in.
Real support at the moments that count. When Kevin’s original business partnership fell apart, GrassRoots was there to help him navigate it, the kind of backup he simply never had in his solo ventures. When Seth had to build from scratch in a territory where nobody knew the brand, corporate sent his franchise coach, Chris, to ride along, run a truck, and meet customers in person. Seth still talks to Chris about once a week.
A community that feels like family. Both men used the same word: family. For two people who’d spent decades making big calls alone, the chance to toss a question to someone who’s been there is the quiet luxury they didn’t know they were missing. As Seth put it, the wrong decision can cost you for years, so having peers and a corporate team in your corner changes everything.
The franchisor wins only when you do. Seth’s logic is hard to argue with. If a company is successful enough to sell franchises, why give them anything less than full cooperation? Kevin agreed, noting that struggling franchises show up in disclosures, so corporate is genuinely invested in every owner’s success. “You can’t fail, really,” Seth said. “It’s kind of a win-win all the way around.”
Growth You Can Point To
The milestones are concrete, and that’s what makes them satisfying. For Kevin, realizing he needed a second truck was the moment it clicked that the business was really working. For Seth, it was the customer counts: his first hundred felt like a milestone, and hitting four hundred told him he was onto something real. He started as one guy in one truck and now runs multiple trucks and technicians, shifting from doing the work to overseeing it, which is exactly the endgame most owners are after.
Watch the full video
The Takeaways
If you’re considering a GrassRoots Turf franchise, here’s the short version of what these owners would tell you:
- Experience in lawn care is optional. Willingness to follow the system is not. The training and the recipe are there. Trust them.
- You can start lean. One person, one truck, and a service center behind you is a real way in.
- The support is ongoing, not just onboarding. Weekly coaching calls and help through tough stretches are part of the deal.
- You’re not alone. A close-knit owner community is, for many, the best part of the whole thing.
- Success is mutual. The system is built so corporate wins when you win.
GrassRoots Turf earned a spot on Franchise Business Review’s Top 200 Franchises list for 2026, a ranking based entirely on franchisee satisfaction surveys, not paid placement. Owners like Kevin and Seth are the reason it’s there.
If you’ve built your own business before and wondered what it would feel like to have a real team behind you this time, that’s worth a conversation. You don’t need to know lawn care. You need to be willing to follow a proven system and to ask. Reach out to learn what owning a GrassRoots Turf franchise could look like for you.