Southeast Commercial Cleaning Roll-Up Across 5 States

The Challenge

A lower mid-market PE firm was executing a roll-up strategy in commercial cleaning and janitorial services across the Southeast U.S. The industry is characterized by low barriers to entry, razor-thin margins for subscale operators, and high fragmentation — creating a compelling consolidation opportunity. The challenge was separating signal from noise: identifying businesses with sticky contract revenue, trained workforces, and owners motivated to sell, versus the thousands of subscale or marginally profitable operators in the space.

Our Solution

Banker Buddy built a comprehensive target map covering commercial cleaning businesses across Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee. Each target was enriched with estimated contract revenue, customer concentration analysis (where available), employee headcount, years in business, and certifications (ISSA CIMS, OSHA compliance). We developed a proprietary scoring model weighting contract quality, geographic density for route optimization, and owner transition readiness. The firm received bi-weekly pipeline updates with new targets and status changes.

Results

• ✓Mapped 1,950+ commercial cleaning businesses across 5 Southeast states
• ✓Scored and prioritized 310 targets meeting minimum revenue and margin thresholds
• ✓Platform closed 4 acquisitions in Year 1, adding $22M in combined revenue
• ✓Achieved 15% route density improvement through geographically clustered targeting
• ✓Active pipeline of 12 additional targets in various stages of outreach