What happened in the industry. What it means for your shop. What to do about it. Read time: ~4 minutes. ___________________________________________________________________ The $500,000 Sentence Most Independent Owners Will Never Hear. "We've been here for 31 years. The shop down the street just got bought but the sign didn't change. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that." A shop owner said that to me last Tuesday. Here's the number that should have been in his head: $500,000. By the end of this post you'll know what built that number, why most shop owners will miss it, and what to do about it before June. WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK Sun Auto, May 4 + May 11. Cypress, Texas (Service Street → Sun Auto Tire & Service, their 127th Texas location). Then Murfreesboro, Tennessee (Quality Tire & Auto, third Tennessee location). Network now sits at 575+ locations with 40+ added this year. Their own language: "key transportation arteries in Middle Tennessee." GreatWater 360, this week. Crosstown Auto Repair in south metro Minneapolis becomes location #155. Local name preserved. Local team preserved. Recruiting platform, procurement engine, benefits administrator, analytics stack — all new behind the wall. Kinderhook backed them in 2021 when they had seven locations in Grand Rapids. Today: 155 in ten states. Five years. Driven Brands, public-market pressure. ADW Capital made a non-binding $18/share proposal on April 30. On April 21, Driven's Audit Committee said previously issued financials for fiscal 2023, 2024, and the first three quarters of 2025 contain material errors and should not be relied on. The 10-K is delayed. Expected by June 15. The 10-Q is also late. Three different stories. Same week. One pattern most owners are reading wrong. THE MATH THAT SHOULD BE IN YOUR HEAD Your shop generates a number every year after you pay yourself a normal wage and pay your taxes. Call it $180,000 for a healthy mid-sized shop. A buyer pays a multiple of that number.

I just got off the phone with a shop owner who offered a tech 5% of gross sales (not gross profit) to come on board. If you were on the call, what would you tell this shop owner?