Dom, owner of Hair Wizards Barbershop in Northeast Philly, has three locations. It took him eight years to get there.
He didn't open the second shop when demand told him to. He opened it when his first shop could run a full week without him.
The pressure to move sooner is almost always there. The books are full, the phone keeps ringing, people are asking if you have a second spot. That feels like permission.
A full book tells you your first location is in demand. It tells you nothing about whether what you built can exist without you in it, or whether it can be replicated somewhere else.
The owners who scale to multiple locations do it the way Dom did: systems first, expansion second.
Running multiple locations? See how SQUIRE reporting gives you a consolidated view across every shop.
Dom's eight-year arc from one shop to three is the clearest playbook available. Here's how he did it, and what to lock in before you try.
Why Most Shops Fail When They Try to Scale
The demand problem isn't what stops most shops from scaling. Most owners trying to open a second location already have more clients than they can handle. The books are full. The phone keeps ringing. People ask if you have a second spot.
That's not a green light. That's proof your first location is in demand. It says nothing about whether you're ready to duplicate it.
What stops most expansions is the systems gap. Everything that held location one together (the owner knowing every barber's schedule, knowing which clients are regulars, knowing when to step in) doesn't transfer to a second building. It doesn't transfer because it was never written down. It was never made into a process someone else could run.
Dom opened his first barbershop in Northeast Philadelphia in 2013. It took him four years of running that shop before he opened a second location. When he talks about those four years, he doesn't describe them as slow. He describes them as necessary.
"My patience level wasn't that good back then. I was still young, 24 or 25. When I used to have meetings with the barbers, the first thing I used to do was point out everybody's flaws — you come in late, you do this, you do that. And if you don't like it, you could get out. That was my patience level. It just drained the barbershop. So the first four years were really just a learning period for me."
He didn't open location two until he knew the first one could run without him in that mode.
What to Lock In Before You Open a Second Location
Three things need to be true before you sign a second lease. If any of them aren't, the second location will expose the gap faster than it fills the revenue.
Can your first location run without you for a full week?
If the answer is no, expanding now won't fix that. It'll double it. A second location doubles the workload, not the coverage.
You need a manager or lead barber who can hold it down when you're not there. Dom's framework: "There always has to be one hardass inside the shop. One guy that I know is gonna hold it down. Somebody that's able to say we don't allow that here." Find that person at location one before you commit to location two. For a framework on what to look for when building that team, see Red Flags, Green Flags.
Do you know what your first location actually earns?
This sounds like a given. For most shop owners, it isn't.
Booth rental models are especially prone to this blind spot. The owner collects rent. Barbers run their own books. The owner has no clear picture of what the shop as a whole is generating.
Dom ran into this when he started thinking about franchising. He met with a franchise lawyer who asked how much the shop made. Dom could only cite what he personally claimed. The lawyer told him they could only work with that number. The actual shop revenue, the figure that would have made the conversation worth having, wasn't visible.
As Dom put it in the SQUIRE State of Barbershops 2026 report: "Before moving to Squire, I only knew what I personally claimed on my taxes. I had no record of what the business as a whole earned."
That blind spot limits every capital conversation. Banks, investors, and partners all want the same thing: what does this business actually make?
Do you have policies that don't depend on you to enforce them?
A no-show protocol. A cancellation policy. Hiring standards. These need to be written down and followed at location one before you can transfer them to location two.
Hair Wizards runs a documented three-step no-show protocol: a courtesy call first, a warning the second time, prepaid-only status on the third occurrence. It's in the Hair Wizards manual. Every barber knows it. It doesn't require Dom to be present to hold.
That's what replicable looks like.
For a broader walkthrough of building the operational foundation at location one, see The Barbershop Operations Playbook.
Dom's Playbook: Eight Years, Three Locations
Dom's expansion arc is worth studying because the pace was deliberate.
First location: 2013, three chairs in Northeast Philly. A year and a half in, they outgrew it and moved to eight chairs.
Four years after that, he opened the second location. He sent his manager from the original shop to run it.
Then COVID hit. The shops kept running. And in 2021, he opened a third location, this one fully commission-based.
Three locations across eight years. His formula at each one was the same: hire lean and grow into demand. "I always said I'm not gonna hire any barbers if they're not going to eat. So I would hire a fifth barber for walk-ins. Once walk-ins were too much for him, I'd hire a sixth barber, let him build, then a seventh, and so on."
No bloated payroll at launch. No overstaffed shops sitting half-full. Each location earned its own growth.
He also points to something most owners underestimate: "In order to open more locations, you've got to let go a little." Dom stood at his first location for eight years before stepping back. Not because he doubted the expansion. Because he knew handing off a shop that wasn't ready would break both the shop and the relationship with the barbers running it.
For another owner's take on building from the ground up, see How Buffalo Joe Scaled His Barbershop from 92 Cents to 6 Chairs.
What SQUIRE Analytics Makes Visible When You're Running Multiple Locations
The moment you go from one shop to two, visibility becomes your most important tool. You can't be in both buildings. Your data has to be.
SQUIRE reporting gives multi-location owners a consolidated view across all their shops: revenue by location, appointment volume, barber performance, no-show rates. Not estimates. Actual numbers you can put in front of a banker, a franchise lawyer, or a prospective partner.
Dom did exactly this. He pulled up the SQUIRE analytics and walked his bank through a full year of data.
"I went to my bank. The only thing I did was pull up the SQUIRE analytics and show them everything throughout the year. They said — I've never seen a barbershop with numbers like this."
The bank dealt with million-dollar companies. A three-location barbershop impressed them. Because the numbers were there and they were clean.
That visibility also tells you what's working. At his first location, Dom tracked revenue climb from $250K to $300K to $350K to $400K to $450K over successive years. That kind of trend, visible in real time, is what informs decisions about when to add a barber, when to push for higher pricing, and when the timing is right to open the next location.
See how SQUIRE reporting works across multiple locations.
How to Know You're Actually Ready to Scale
You're ready to open a second location when the systems at your first location run without you.
Not "run mostly fine." Not "run fine when I check in twice a day." Fully run. The scheduling, the no-show protocol, the hiring standards, the financial tracking: all of it needs to hold with you gone for a full week.
A few signs that you're there:
Your first location has a lead barber or manager who holds it down without daily direction from you. Your revenue data is clean and accessible, not a rough estimate you piece together at tax time. Your policies are written, and your team follows them. You have enough in the bank to carry a new location through its first six months without touching what the first shop earns.
If those aren't true, the answer isn't "open anyway and figure it out." Build those systems now, while the stakes are lower.
The shops that go from one location to many aren't the ones who moved fastest. They're the ones who did the foundation work before they broke ground.
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