January 2020. A rented suite in Melissa, Texas, just north of Dallas.
Joey Mitnick has 92 cents in his bank account, an antique Takara Belmont 225 his mom gave him, and a SQUIRE account he doesn't have to pay for yet.
That's the whole foundation.
"I started the brand with 92 cents," he says. "I had 92 cents in my bank account and an old Takara Belmont 225 that my mom had given me as a gift."
Five years later, Buffalo Joe's Barber Lounge runs 300 haircuts a week across six chairs. A second location is under contract. A barber school is on the drawing board. And Joey is describing a vision most people would call too big: the largest barber-owned barbershop franchise in the world.
This is how he got there.
He Left a Career to Bet on Himself
Joey came from medical device sales. Consistent income, corporate structure, and a feeling he wanted out of.
The barbershop industry pulled him in: the craft, the culture, the direct relationship between a barber and the people they serve. He trained, built his clientele, and opened Buffalo Joe's in a suite with almost no money in his account.
"We're betting on me," he says. "So here we are now."
His corporate background gave him an edge most first-time shop owners don't have: a sales mindset and years of managing teams. He got fully booked faster than the barbers around him. The challenge wasn't managing the business. It was finding barbers who wanted to grow with it.
COVID Hit Two Months In. Engage Kept His Clients.
Buffalo Joe's had been open for about two months when the pandemic shut barbershops across the country.
For a solo operator running on near-zero reserves, that could have ended the business before it started.
SQUIRE unlocked Engage at no cost during the shutdown, giving Joey a direct line to his clients when he couldn't physically reach them. He used it to stay in contact, maintain the relationships he'd spent two months building, and make sure his book held together while the doors were closed.
When shops reopened, his clients came back.
That's what it looks like to own your client relationships instead of renting access through a platform that might compete with you the moment things get difficult. The barbershop operations playbook covers the full systems picture for shops that want that kind of stability.
From One Suite to Six Chairs
Once restrictions lifted, demand came back fast.
Joey's suite filled up. Then overfilled. He had a decision to make: stay capped at what one chair could produce, or build something that could scale.
He built.
The shop grew to sixeven chairs. Throughput hit 300 haircuts per week from a single location. Not per barber. Total, every week, out of one shop.
Getting there required solving a problem most barbers underestimate: building a culture that attracts the right people. Joey didn't just offer chairs. He offered investment. He offered co-ownership for barbers who wanted to build something of their own. The pitch wasn't a rent split. It was a vision.
"It's a lot of making people better, men better. I'll teach y'all. I'll invest in one for you. We can own it together. It doesn't have to have my name on it."
That's the kind of environment that keeps chairs filled with people who actually care.
Watch: Joey tells the full story in his own words
Watch on YouTube: Joey Mitnick, Buffalo Joe's Barber Lounge — Full Interview
For a closer look at how shops at this level stay organized, the modern barbershop management system breakdown is worth reading before your second location becomes more than a plan.
Choosing the Lane
There's a point most growing shop owners hit where they're doing too many things at once. Cutting all day, managing staff, handling bookings, planning the next location.
Something always gets less than your full attention.
Joey knows this. He talks about it plainly. You can't cut hair and scale a business past two or three locations. The math doesn't work, and pretending it does means one of them suffers.
So he's stepping back from the chair. Not because he wants to stop cutting. Because the business needs someone focused on building it, and he's choosing that role.
That transition means putting systems in place that run without him in the room. Booking, client communications, payments, reporting: all of it through SQUIRE so the shop keeps moving whether he's there or not.
It also means thinking differently about who he hires. Finding barbers who can anchor a shop without the owner present is a different search than filling an open chair.
What's Next: Second Location, School, and a Franchise Vision
Joey is signing on his second location now: a barbershop and salon hybrid. Real estate shopping for a barber school is underway.
The long-range plan is bigger than most people build toward: a barber-owned franchise network, planted into small growing towns and old downtowns, where fathers and sons develop a relationship with the same barber across decades.
"I want fathers and sons to grow up and talk about when they used to get their hair cut at Buffalo Joe's Barber Lounge, and how my same barber still cuts me."
He's also watching where the industry is heading. On AI, he's direct: everything operational can eventually run autonomously. That frees barbers to focus on the human side of the chair, which is where the real value has always been. The shops that don't adapt to that shift will fall behind. The ones that build their systems now won't have to scramble later.
The Systems Were Always Available
Joey has one of the more direct takes on SQUIRE you'll hear from any shop owner.
"SQUIRE is the systems. You could literally be in barber school right now. You're going to rent a chair. If you go rent a chair, and you start SQUIRE, you now have all the systems that I've worked since 2019 to create."
He didn't build those systems from scratch. He bought access to infrastructure that already existed, and pointed it at his business from day one.
"You can buy the systems. They're right here, just sign up."
That's his answer to every barber who says they're not ready, or they can't afford it, or they'll figure it out once the shop grows.
You don't figure out the systems after you scale. You scale because you have them.
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