Three franchises focusing on creating safe and inclusive spaces for their customers and communities
By Hannah Foulger
Every customer, every client, no matter what industry you’re in, comes with a unique set of needs. By meeting people’s specific needs, certain franchises can carve a niche for themselves. Some franchises, like HeartNest Care, Lice Squad.com, and Kinetic Auto Service, find this niche through creating safer spaces for their customers. There is no universal “safe space,” as nobody can meet everyone’s needs all the time. But by creating safer, more inclusive spaces, these three franchises are able to develop returning clientele and concrete referrals.
HeartNest Care
As Canada’s largest generation ages and the country faces a drastic population shift, the demand for home care is rising. But for many immigrant families, the challenge isn’t just access—it’s finding care that understands language, culture, and family values.
“We foster safe and inclusive space by training caregivers beyond technical skill, focusing on empathy and communications,” says founder Chau Nguyen, who founded HeartNest in Calgary in 2025. As an immigrant from Vietnam, Nguyen built the brand on the belief that quality care doesn’t just meet medical needs, it honours identity. “By respecting culture, background, language, and family dynamics, we design [a] care plan that honours both medical needs and emotional comfort.”
The brand’s first location primarily served Vietnamese elders. Their Vietnamese-speaking staff were able to care for these elders in a culturally sensitive way, and in their first language. Staff also worked alongside English-speaking family members to develop care plans which are unique to each person.
HeartNest encourages franchisees to serve their own cultural communities. COO Cecilia der Merwe gives the example of a potential franchisee who could be a member of the Punjabi community and who speaks Punjab. Franchisees would be equipped and trained to offer care to their Punjabi neighbours, in their own neighbourhoods.
The training that HeartNest provides gives its franchisees both the knowledge on how to provide home care services as well as how to adapt these practices to serve their communities. This isn’t only about the technical knowledge or about meeting each individual’s needs, but the resources and training to support caregiving staff through the emotional and physical labour that their job requires too.
Bottom line: the best franchisees for HeartNest, according to Nguyen, are franchisees who “care deeply about people, and are comfortable leading teams with empathy, valuing long-term relationships over short term wins.”
Kinetic Auto Service
When Erin Vaughan founded Kinetic Auto Service in Regina, Saskatchewan in 2011, she did not intend to have a technician roster entirely comprised of women, but Kinetic Auto has become a place where Vaughan and her team can foster and grow female technicians. Roughly 4 per cent of all technicians in Canada are women, and as such, many women, Vaughan included, have felt unsupported and excluded, causing many skilled technicians to leave the industry.
Vaughan hired an apprentice last June who was doing her technician training and needed a two-week, unpaid work placement. The apprentice had called ten different auto shops who all rejected her, likely due to her gender considering the male apprentices acquired placements in those same shops. Her teacher called Kinetic’s manager and they were happy to take her on for those two weeks and hire her as a permanent technician.
“Often women just aren’t given a chance to show they’re capable. And she’s excellent,” Vaughan says.
In her early career, Vaughan worked at an auto shop that went bankrupt, but she believed she could develop a shop that was better run. Vaughan says that what many technicians struggle with in running a business is getting proper training from their franchise, particularly in developing good client communication and running a profitable shop.
Women form the majority of Kinetic’s clientele, but the brand also attracts a queer client base as well. “We have a large LGBTQ[+] client base, as well as women and men who are okay not knowing about [cars]. They know they can come here and say, ‘Man, I don’t know.’ And we’re like, ‘That’s okay. We know and we can help you.’” As such, Vaughan has geared Kinetic’s marketing towards those who know that they don’t understand anything about automotive mechanics but want a service partner that they can trust.
Kinetic has only recently entered into the franchising space, but what they offer is entirely unique. Vaughan and her team are focussed on expanding the brand as a way to improve the industry and equipping other people, particularly women and gender diverse people, to run better businesses. What they are offering is a franchise model dedicated to mentorship and business development, coaching franchisees from the often small profit margins (5 per cent according to Vaughan) up to 20 per cent or more.
But these franchisees don’t necessarily have to be technicians. Vaughan says what they need are good leaders who can find and develop and retain the right staff. “What we’re offering is more supportive [than other brands] and a mission … to make this industry better.”
Lice Squad.com and Superhero Kids Hair with Care
In 2001 in Toronto, Ontario, single mom on social assistance Dawn Mucci decided to become the help she needed most and founded Lice Squad.com and Superhero Kids Hair with Care, a niche venture involving mobile hair services and full-service kids’ salons. They’re the first full-serve children’s hair company in Canada to primarily focus on safe and pesticide-free head lice solutions for families and organizations. What’s more, they offer hair care services that cater “to families and children living with autism and other special needs.”
Societal stigma and personal shame can accompany a head lice infestation, but Lice Squad.com aims to mitigate these concerns. “From the beginning,” Mucci says, “I wanted to create a space that was inclusive and friendly, and when people came in feeling scared, ashamed, and angry, they would leave feeling empowered, cared about, and lifted.” This is why they implemented a strategy to wrap all their clients in superhero capes.
“When you put a cape on a kid, they lose their fear and inhibition and they feel very special. Even adults love the superhero experience as lice do not discriminate between age, gender or social economic status. That’s what we want our clients to feel. They are special and cared for. A clinical [approach] would not fit that. We’re about breaking the stigma and providing a safe and inclusive space.”
In the early years of Lice Squad.com, Mucci recognized the unique needs of autistic and sensory sensitive children during hair treatments. “I was working for a mother with three daughters who had autism. I didn’t know a lot about autism at the time, and I wasn’t given many instructions other than that they might not sit still. The little girl was highly sensitive, and she literally punched me,” Mucci shares. “I had never experienced that before, and it got me thinking about how much of a challenge it was if you were not prepared and aware of how to navigate and protect yourself, as well as protect the child that you’re working on, because it’s really scary for them to have someone so close to them in their space.” The experience made her realize the importance of creating a safe space for both the clients and the providers.
Because of this experience, Mucci worked with an autism consultant that worked with first responders. They first had their staff take the general autism awareness courses, before developing their own hair-care specific training. This expertise gives them a range of tools to work with disabled and neurodiverse children in a way that keeps them and the clients safe.
This specialization has brought this franchise across Canada. With many opportunities available, Mucci hopes to help other women like her: “Who knew, 25 years later I would have a national franchise system helping other mothers start businesses that create jobs and provide a vital community service.”
