How Zach Peyton Turned Superior Fence and Rail Into a $1 Billion Franchise

Featuring Zach Peyton, Brand President of Superior Fence & Rail — the largest fence franchise in America, part of the Empower Brands platform.

Zach Peyton built Superior Fence & Rail into a 118-location franchise system doing more than $300 million in system-wide sales by doing three things most franchise leaders refuse to do. He absorbed early operational chaos at the corporate level instead of pushing it down to franchisees. He ignored the franchise industry's playbook and invented his own. He treats franchisee happiness as the only metric that matters.

He told me all of this on our podcast wearing a fuzzy Christmas sweater and shorts, because he lives in Florida and the sweater was the joke. I have been working alongside Zach for the last quarter rolling out NaiL AI across the Superior network, and the conversation we recorded covers the full arc of how Superior went from one Jacksonville location to over $1 billion in cumulative sales since franchising began.

Here are the operational lessons in his own words.

Pick the category nobody else wanted to systematize

Before Superior Fence & Rail, three or four other groups had tried to franchise fencing and failed. Zach was aware of three off the top of his head and assumed there were more.

Fencing got skipped while HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and roofing all got franchised because of operational nuance. Vinyl panels are two inches taller in some parts of the country and shorter in others. Nobody in Florida builds the same way they build in Michigan. Get a few fence operators from different regions in a room and they will argue in circles about the right way to set a post.

The supply chain is the other half. Most outsiders assume fence supply is fragmented. Zach's read is that three or four companies now own 60 to 80 percent of it. He compared it to the grocery store. It looks like dozens of brands on the shelf, with four parent companies behind almost all of them.

That complexity scared other franchisors away. It became Superior's moat. Zach went into a category nobody wanted to systematize, then spent seven years systematizing it.

Absorb the chaos so your first franchisees never feel it

Zach left the Army after five years of service and took a corporate job at GE while waiting for the right business opportunity. Two weeks in, his college roommate's brother called and said his fence operation in Orlando wanted to expand into Jacksonville and needed someone to run it. Zach took the job, eventually bought his partners out of the Jacksonville location, and started paying a small licensing fee for the Superior Fence & Rail trademark.

Years later, the original trademark holder Chris Johnson came to him and said he had always wanted to franchise the concept. Chris told Zach that the work he had done on systems, processes, and culture in Jacksonville was the missing piece. They did not raise $2 million to launch. They shoestringed the franchise out of their two operating companies, started franchising, and sold their first three or four units shortly after.

Then almost everything broke.

"Every single aspect of the business — the technology stack we thought we were going to use, the backend systems, our supply chain partners — like everything seemed to just blow up. And then in spite of all of those things, we had committed to three or four folks: hey, we're going to get you set up and make you successful."

Zach worked from 4am to 7am, got his kids to school, worked again from 8:30 to 3:30, picked the kids up, did dinner and bedtime, then worked from 8pm until midnight or later.

None of those original franchisees failed. Every one of them is still operating today. The system's very first franchisees, Gary and Andrea Locke, sold their business and effectively retired early. Zach's takeaway:

"It wasn't just me working really hard. The folks that had started the other businesses, the operators, they were working their tails off. We did a really good job of finding the right franchisees to come on early."

The lesson for any franchise leader launching a system: your first three to five franchisees are a brand-defining event. Absorb the backend chaos at corporate. Never push it down to your operators.

Ignore the franchise industry on purpose

I asked Zach why he did not seek mentorship inside the franchise industry in the early years. He was direct.

"There was probably a little bit of hubris there. We didn't really know what we didn't know, and didn't bother finding it out."

Part of it was money. A franchise expo in Orlando wanted around $3,000 to attend, and Zach and Chris joked about claiming to be married to get the spouse discount. Zach decided to pull the vendor list, research the companies that mattered, and call them directly. He connected with the leadership at Outdoor Living Brands looking for someone to call when things got hard. That relationship turned out to matter when Outdoor Living Brands ended up being part of the company that acquired Superior.

Most of what Superior Fence & Rail does today was invented in Jacksonville and Orlando. The team later conformed in a few areas to manage legal risk. The operating model, the support structure, and the franchisee experience all came from running real fence businesses and figuring out what worked one year at a time.

The takeaway for any brand president surrounded by franchise consultants: your only inputs cannot come from people who franchised something else. Your operating model has to come from inside your own category. Conform where the legal risk is real. Otherwise build your own playbook.

Use franchisee happiness as the only metric that matters

When Zach talks about how he runs the system, he uses the word happiness more than the word growth.

"Their success is our number one metric. That's all that matters. That's the only thing that matters. And the funny thing is, they're the ones who define their success."

When the system targets 22 percent growth in a given year, that number is not pulled from a board deck. It is reverse-engineered from what the franchisees said they wanted to do that year. If hitting an aggressive growth number means making franchisees unhappy along the way, Zach will not take the trade.

"That's stepping over a dollar to save a dime. Happy franchisees are our one well to draw upon. If our system is unhappy, that's just poisoning the well."

The most flattering moment of his career came when an Army friend introduced him to a guy named Kyle who was finishing the Chick-fil-A franchise process. Kyle told Zach that if Chick-fil-A did not work out, Superior Fence & Rail was his number one alternative.

Zach felt pride and anxiety in the same beat. Pride because Chick-fil-A is the gold standard of franchising. Anxiety because that is the standard he gets held to now. His response was honest. He has been franchising for seven years, not seventy. The support level today is meaningfully better than last year, which was better than the year before. That is all he can promise.

If you are running a system, ask yourself which of these your operating cadence is built around: what your franchisees said they wanted, or what your PE deck said you would hit by year-end.

Use the gauntlet to sharpen the system

COVID was Zach's gauntlet, and he says it is the most useful thing that ever happened to the system.

"I stopped any new development, any new ideas, like nothing proactive. It was just sort of like, okay, I'm going to show up, I'm going to sit here, and I'm going to wait for the next thing to blow up, and then I'm going to be ready to solve that problem."

Every day during COVID, something blew up. A supplier cut deliveries to limited weekly trucks. Vehicles were impossible to buy. Labor was impossible to hire. Customers, in the same window, were walking up handing over deposit checks for fences they had not even seen.

Two outcomes came out of that period.

• The chaos sorted the supply chain into real partners and fake friends. That distinction has shaped every vendor decision since.
• The slowdown after COVID forced an even harder reset. Six to eight national fence franchise competitors have spawned. Local competition got sharper. Demand normalized. Superior responded by pulling the operation apart and putting it back together — supply chain, marketing tactics, and support model.

The brands that used the post-COVID slowdown to reevaluate everything are the ones operating from strength right now. The ones that used it to coast are getting passed.

Find the partner that lifts the right weight

Superior Fence & Rail sold to what became the Empower Brands franchise platform when the system was sitting at 40 to 45 units sold. The system has nearly tripled since.

The way Zach talks about the deal centers on what the platform took off his shoulders rather than the multiple.

"If Chris and I had continued on on our own, we'd have a legal team. We'd have an accounting team. We'd have our own internal marketing team. I'd have to carve up my time worrying about all of those guys. So I get the best of both worlds. I get all the support, but without having to worry about sourcing a CMO, a CFO, a franchise development officer."

He was honest about the personal cost of running everything himself before the deal:

"You don't realize how heavy it is until it's gone. And you're like, oh my God, how did I ever carry this around with me every day?"

That weight came from the obligation Zach felt for the franchisees and their families. His wife has had to talk to him about his compulsive email habit at home. For years the only way the operation did not fall over was if he stayed plugged in around the clock.

Zach's advice for any brand president evaluating a PE partner or platform deal sits in that frame. The multiple matters less than the weight the platform takes off your desk. Focus on whether the partner absorbs your legal, finance, marketing, and franchise development functions so you can spend your time on franchisee outcomes. That shift is what allowed Superior's run from 45 units to 118.

How Zach evaluates new technology

This part matters because the way Zach evaluates infrastructure at the franchise level is the same logic any brand president should apply.

"I tell the folks that come into the system, I will bend over backwards for you. But what I can't do is I can't sell a fence for you, and I can't install it for you. That's your job. You have to sell and get it in the ground."

Zach calls his job setting the stage for franchisees to succeed. Empower's shared services let him stay in that lane. His support team's mandate is to make every available resource better year over year. Anything that removes a real operational constraint from his franchisees gets a serious look. Anything that does not is a distraction.

That is the lens Superior used when evaluating NaiL. Missed calls during franchisee lunch hours and after-hours were costing real revenue across 100+ locations. Zach described the result in his own words:

"Our Jacksonville location had its best residential sales month ever. A major contributing factor was our implementation of NaiL. We never miss any calls. We never miss any appointments with customers. NaiL solves the problem of everybody taking their lunch break on Monday and Tuesday and wanting to call in. We have unlimited capacity now to take calls from customers, get appointments scheduled with our sales reps, and go out and win business."

Roughly 70 percent of the Superior system has rolled out NaiL since the pilot launched. The pattern is the same one Zach applies to every operational decision. Find the constraint. Remove it at the system level. Let franchisees do what only franchisees can do.

What other franchise brand presidents should take from Zach's playbook

Three operational lessons from Zach's seven years of franchising are worth stealing:

• Early units are brand-defining. Absorb the chaos of a franchise launch at corporate. Your first three to five operators should never feel the difference between your messy launch and your eventual operating standard.
• The franchise industry does not have all the answers. Build your operating model from inside your own category. Conform where the legal risk is real and ignore the rest.
• Franchisee happiness is a leading indicator. Spreadsheet growth from unhappy franchisees compounds against the system. Spreadsheet growth from happy franchisees compounds for it.

Zach has been building Superior Fence & Rail for seven years. He is not Chick-fil-A. The operating discipline that took the system from one Jacksonville location to a $300 million franchise platform is the same discipline the next wave of PE-backed home service brands will need to scale.

Watch the full conversation and book a NaiL strategy call

If you are running a 50 to 200 location franchise system and the missed-call problem looks familiar, watch the full Zach Peyton interview here and then book a 30-minute strategy call with our team about what a pilot would look like in your system.

Article by George Anagnostopoulos, founder of NaiL AI. Featuring Zach Peyton, Brand President of Superior Fence & Rail. The Content Factory methodology this article follows is built on the BlitzMetrics framework developed by Dennis Yu.