Water Babies franchisee Brittany Torres is helping grow swimming skills and community
By Suzanne Bowness
Franchisee Brittany Torres first discovered Water Babies not as a businesswoman but as a mom looking for swimming lessons for her infant son. “That was our first exposure to Water Babies, and we were incredibly impressed with the program and the quality of the lessons, just the overall experience for us and our little guy. We looked forward to lessons every week,” says Torres.
Having entered as a customer, Torres became an instructor after seeing a callout from the brand. Next, it was her turn to reach out—would becoming a franchisee be a good fit for her and her husband? When they moved from Toronto to Kingston to be closer to family, Torres also seized the opportunity for an expanded career path, buying into the eastern Ontario territory that stretches north to Peterborough and along Highway 401 as far east as Brockville/Prescott.
Traversing uncharted waters
As most first-year franchisees know, Torres’ early to-do list was full of many new tasks. Yet one that’s fairly unique to swimming lessons was to find appropriate pools. As a non-traditional business, Water Babies franchises rent out space in pools in their communities, but these locations not only need to be the right size but meet health and safety standards too, including the right pH and temperature. Hotels and community centres may be first to come to mind, but it turns out even resorts and hospitals can be workable (a hospital hydrotherapy pool is one of Torres’s current Kingston locations).
Getting the word out was another task, one more standard across new businesses. Fortunately, Torres already had insider intel (via her family) that the demand for swimming lessons was high. After moving to Kingston in the summer, lots of promotion ensured that classes were full up on launch in September 2024. Today she doubles down on those early marketing tactics, with a focus on Instagram and Facebook, plus Facebook and Google ads, and local events.
To help with this learning curve, Torres was grateful for guidance from the franchisor. Trained as a physiotherapist, Torres was experienced at working with children in a health context. Through the intensive swim teacher training in Toronto, and an added peek into the brand’s head office working in administration for Water Babies, she was familiar with the franchise system. But the business side was pretty new. “A lot of aspects of running a franchise, especially around finances, was completely new to me. But they have such a comprehensive and structured approach to walking you through it,” says Torres.
Training took place both in-person and virtually over Microsoft Teams on topics from finance and marketing to human resources and operations. “They really went through every aspect of the business. They have a ton of templates and resources,” says Torres. The franchise also connected her with another new owner who had just been through their own startup. “They’re amazing. We felt fully supported.” Recently, she attended the Water Babies annual conference in the U.K. (where the franchise originated) and experienced that same community on a global scale.
A new operation swims along
At launch, Torres had 100 swimmers registered. By their one-year mark, there were 200 swimmers. Classes run for 30 minutes each on five weeknights and a weekend day, with groups between five and 10 swimmers, depending on the pool capacity. Classes are structured and progressive with a warmup and cooldown, plus songs and games built in along with safety skills (babies do underwater swims from the first class!).
Water Babies runs on a subscription model where students renew monthly and stay in the same cohort until they age out of the program. “It’s cool because the same families can swim together in the same class right up until age five, and they all progress through the structured program together, rather than having to sign up for different sessions.”
Since the franchise serves children from infancy to age five, each swimmer is required to have a parent alongside them. “A big aspect of it is the bonding for the parents as well. They all get to know each other. We’ve had a lot of people who have met through Water Babies, and they do playdates outside of Water Babies now, which I just think is so cool, the community we’ve built. That’s one of my favorite parts,” shares Torres.
Since establishing her presence in Kingston, Torres has moved ahead to open operations in Peterborough to the west and, most recently, Prescott to the east this fall. She has expanded from three to seven pools, and hired three additional instructors besides herself, freeing up her time as owner.
Challenges and rewards
In terms of challenges in the first year, while Torres says the launch has gone well and the pools search was something new, for her the realization was more operational, learning to delegate certain parts of the operation in order to focus on growing the business. “I’ve learned that we can’t keep growing unless I release control of the things that I don’t need to be the one doing,” says Torres. Today, she’s passed off much of the day-to-day instruction to her newly hired instructors and some of the booking and administration to her husband.
Another challenge in the first year is maintaining work-life balance, especially in a franchise when the hours can be on evenings and weekends. “When you’re starting this as a new franchisee, you’re pouring your heart and soul into it every day. It’s easy to just live and breathe the franchise,” she says. Setting an end time to her workday and intentionally blocking off time as “family days” have helped.
Torres says she loves the business she’s built and has no regrets. She especially likes the variety of tasks, and even the balance of settings, from interacting with families in the pool to working quietly at her desk on emails or spreadsheets. She likes the flexibility of working independently so she can get her son to daycare, and yet lauds the benefits of a franchise system where she can easily source answers to questions. “I never have to reinvent the wheel with any financial templates or spreadsheets. There’s a process for everything, so I can take those and adapt it. That obviously saves so much time. They’ve already gone through it, so they’ve learned what works and what doesn’t,” she says.
In terms of advice for those looking to join a franchise, Torres recommends being open-minded and asking many questions. Once you get started, being organized is really important, especially in a franchise with a lot of moving parts. Being creative with solving problems can be a way to build resilience. She plans to apply all of those tactics as she continues to grow her own operation, both in the communities where she’s already established and in others where she’s already heard calls for her services. “One of my goals is to be the go-to school for babies and toddlers in Eastern Ontario,” she says.
Perhaps Torres’ satisfaction with her new life is best captured by thinking back to the same chlorinated setting where she first discovered the franchise. Today, she’s a customer of her own classes, attending with her son who is now three. “I go to lessons in Kingston with my son, so when I’m there in the pool just as a parent, [I’m] taking a step back and [I] just like seeing all the happy families, I’m like, this is what we’re creating. It’s just so rewarding.”
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