Home care franchise provider Touching Hearts at Home recently surpassed 100 franchise locations and is now looking to triple that figure in the next five years.  

To support growth and operator success, the company is offering franchisees new AI-powered tools and coaching offerings to help them overcome challenges, including margin pressure, CEO Todd Treml told Home Health Care News.

Edina, Minnesota-based Touching Hearts at Home is a franchise home care provider offering companionship, transportation and other home care services, as well as Alzheimer’s and dementia care.

HHCN recently caught up with Treml to discuss the company’s growth goals and strategy, its franchisee support initiatives and how Touching Hearts at Home has shifted from “an emerging company to a mature company.”

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What are some of Touching Hearts at Home’s greatest accomplishments so far in 2026?

A lot has happened in the two years since I’ve joined the company.

Number one, the growth of our infrastructure and support teams that we have at Touching Hearts as a franchise company. Two, how we’re supporting those franchisees, and then couple that with the growth that we’ve had. Our organization prior to me coming in, hadn’t awarded a franchise in a few years, so we put systems in place.

We’re proud of the fact that we awarded 20 franchises in 2025, and we’re on pace to award 40 this year. This year we exceeded a pretty significant milestone of 100 locations. Three out of four franchise companies in the industry today never get to that number. It moves us from an emerging company to a mature company, so very proud of that.

We have 102 franchises and growing. So clearly, there’s a lot of white space in front of us to continue to grow and open in underserved markets, which is ultimately what our goal is in terms of our expansion.

But I think what I tend to focus on is really what’s happening at the office level, the agency level. How we’re supporting owners, giving them training, technology, how we’re now putting business coaches in the field, how we’re supporting them through listening and learning. So the business itself has been very strong for us, and the trend continues.

What are your goals for growth?

We’ve set out a five-year vision to continue to do the kind of things we think are necessary to grow our business, but more importantly, to grow the strength of the current franchise system that we do have. So we don’t just look at locations. Having hundreds of locations is certainly within our grasp, and we plan to do that. But just as importantly, it’s about unit-level profitability for the franchise owners. So we want to make sure that we’re putting the right systems in place, operational pieces, playbooks, marketing, everything in place to support them in their growth. Because ultimately, that’s really what matters at the end of the day.  

At the office level, we continue to refine the things that we’re doing. What the next several years look like for us also is how we apply technology and AI into our day-to-day business to reduce the friction in the operations while maintaining incredible human-to-human care. That’s really a big discussion that’s happening. We could go a lot farther on that, but that’s a little bit of our vision. We’re going to continue to grow the brand, but at the same time, our focus is very clearly on being a stronger system for our franchise owners as well. 

How would you describe your strategy for growth?

There are two ways that we grow. One is at the unit level with the franchise owner, and one is to build locations from a location standpoint.

But really, ultimately, in terms of franchise development expansion, it’s about a few things. It’s about lead generation. It’s pretty classic sales funnel for us, and it’s ultimately bringing key candidates through our discovery process that really fit the vision of the organization.

The second side of it is really on the franchisee side. When I came in, we didn’t have franchise business coaches. We now have two. We’re adding our third. We have put together an incredible owner training program called Heart Start Academy, which gets franchisees off on the right foot. So we put a whole new training program in place and a strategy there.

We have built out a complete franchise command center for our franchise owners. Think about it as a portal that they can access. There is tremendous opportunity there. And then teaching leadership. We have conferences, we have regional meetings. Every opportunity that we have to continue to educate, listen, and help support franchise owners, ultimately to get them to a place where they’re meeting their personal and financial goals.

What are two or three top issues for franchisees that you’re coaching them through right now?

We know that there’s margin pressure. We know that there’s turnover. We know that retention is a big piece of it. So at the office level, they think very much about those things. Where we’re focused right now is, number one, business coaching, meeting them where they’re at, and helping them not just operationally but financially and strategy and planning.

Systems to help improve caregiver retention, whether it’s vendors or programs or strategies in place to help them to retain caregivers, because we all know that’s certainly one of the most important things that we deal with every day.

Technology advancements: remote, virtual. Certainly, there’s a place for all of this, and we’re employing AI and technology everywhere to help franchisees smooth out the back end of the operations, provide more continuity of operations, and be able to allocate people to human-to-human business and resources. We are working towards this workflow of back-end repetitive work that we can accomplish through AI.

I would certainly say caregiver, disciplined operations, smart technology. Those are the things we’re focused on.

What’s your five-year plan for Touching Hearts at Home?

Our five-year plan is to have 300 locations. But the other thing that is equally as important as that number and those locations on a map is a minimum net income criteria and goal that we are setting for franchise owners. Just putting numbers on the board is meaningless unless you have successful franchise owners, and that, by the way, is the reason that we actually have grown. Because of the success of our franchise owners and how they can validate how this brand has worked for them.