Paul and Kathryn Jost own two territories of Kitchen Tune-Up with 10 employees. They began by opening a franchise in 2020 in Denver and followed up with a Bath Tune Up in 2024. Before starting Kitchen Tune Up and Bath Tune Up, Paul worked in senior marketing & management roles in various Fortune 500 companies, and Kathryn ran her own company as a hairstylist.
Kathryn is from Denver, Colorado, and Paul is from St Louis, MO. Together, they live in Central Denver with their three amazing girls and two dogs. In their free time, they love to spend time exploring Colorado through camping, hiking, and seeing the sights. They are foodies and love to try out all the new restaurants.
What made you decide to look into purchasing a franchise?
After years of working in the corporate world, I was looking for a new opportunity to build and run a company of my own. Franchising really excited me as it offered a way to scale quicker and with less risk than starting a new business from scratch.
When researching franchises, what criteria mattered to you most? How did your franchise meet that criteria?
Through the years we have always enjoyed working and investing in our home, and now have fulfilled a dream to be able to help others do the same through Kitchen Tune-Up and Bath Tune-Up. Additionally, the values, trust, and focus the franchise had on the customer experience really resonated with us as an opportunity to differentiate our business versus other contractors in our market.
Financing can be an obstacle and/or intimidating factor for aspiring entrepreneurs. How did you find financing options to purchase your franchise?
We did a 401K ROBs rollover to start our Kitchen Tune Up business and then used proceeds from that to open our Bath Tune-Up business.
Which of your prior skills and experiences do you use in operating your business today?
Kathryn’s background in running her own salon really provided a strong foundation for learning how to connect with customers. This translated to the connections that she and our other designers focus on during our in home consultations. On my end, my diverse background in the corporate world provided a strong foundation in running teams, leveraging numbers and data to make decisions, and in building repeatable and scalable processes with teams and vendors to drive growth and consistency in execution.
During your research, what resources did you use to explore opportunities?
We worked with a franchise broker to explore various franchise concepts.
When doing your research, which questions did you ask the franchisees?
We asked lots of questions. From day-to-day operations to questions about the franchisor partnership and market opportunity. But some of the most insightful parts of those discussions came from asking current owners what habits and recommendations the most successful franchise owners did to ramp up quickly. What did they do that made them ramp up quicker than their peers?
Which questions did you ask the franchisor?
Asked them to talk to different franchise owners at different stages of their maturity to make sure we got perspectives from owners that were just starting up to those that were more seasoned. We also asked a lot of details about the system and processes they would provide, and made sure we understood key areas that we would have to provide and/or do ourselves to be successful.
What were your first 90 days like as a franchisee?
Lots of training with the franchisor and local franchise owners. We spent time shadowing other owners to take the training we received and seeing it putting it into action by other successful owners. This really helped us tease out lingering questions and/or gain additional confidence in our business. We also spent a lot of time focused on dialing in our operations for both sales and execution, refining what we were taught.
At what point did you feel like you “got the hang of it” and settled in as a business owner?
Once we were about 3-4 months in and had executed a few jobs and sold various others, we started feeling much more confident that we were going to be successful in our business. The reality of remodeling is that every kitchen or bathroom has its unique needs and differences. After about a year of seeing these various nuances, we really felt that we had the foundation and skills to handle these unique situations as they came up.
How does the franchisor support and encourage your success?
Kitchen Tune-Up was great with onboarding us with our initial training and continued support as we ramped up and had new questions and needs as we scaled. The strong culture of the franchisor and with other franchisees was a big draw for us in choosing Kitchen Tune Up and Bath Tune Up.
What are you most proud of and why?
Over the years, we are most proud of the recognition we have received from the franchisor and other franchise owners. Our team has won numerous prestigious awards, including multiple projects of the year, customer service of the year 2024, and franchise of the year 2025.
What advice would you give to potential franchise owners?
Business ownership can be one of the most rewarding things. We are proud that we have built a business to support not just our family financially, but also that we are supporting the livelihoods of our employees and helping our customers build wealth through increasing the value of their most prized asset (their house). But these things aren’t a given when starting a franchise. We believe it requires a lot of owner passion and drive to achieve success. And as an owner, you constantly need to build, learn, and evolve your business.
More about the Kitchen Tune-Up Franchise
Kitchen Tune-Up appears on a few of Franchise Business Review’s lists. We use data from franchisee surveys to rank the best franchise brands to own. Only the brands that exceed FBR’s franchisee satisfaction benchmark are displayed on our website. Here’s how Kitchen Tune-Up franchise owners rated their franchise.
Highlights include:
- 89% of franchisees agree that their fellow franchisees are supportive of the brand.
- 90% of franchisees agree that their fellow franchisees are supportive of each other.
- 89% of franchisees agree that their fellow franchisees actively participate in company programs and events.
Kitchen Tune-Up cares a great deal about transparency, so they actually share their full franchisee satisfaction report. Download that here.
