Skiptown CEO Mike Rotondo, pictured with his two Shih Tzu poodles, Maddie and Mika, helped scale a number of national brands, including Altitude Trampoline Park, Edible Arrangements and Tropical Smoothie Cafe.
Skiptown, which offers dog daycare and grooming and has a dog park component, has three corporate locations. The brand’s private equity owners recruited Mike Rotondo as CEO in 2024, and he’s positioning Skiptown for franchise growth.
Mike Rotondo’s latest passion was on full display when he took time out of his busy day as CEO of Skiptown to talk about his franchise career. At one point, he proudly introduced two important members of his extended family: Maddie and Mika. The two 15-year-old Shih Tzu-poodle mixes momentarily stole the show.
“We rescued them when they were young and, as you can see, they are important members of our family,” Rotondo said as he held up Maddie and Mika for the camera.
Rotondo, a personable and animated franchise executive in his early 60s, has a lot of history overseeing established brands including Altitude Trampoline Parks, Edible Arrangements and Tropical Smoothie Cafe. He is now focused on scaling Skiptown, a technology-enabled emerging pet care concept that features dog grooming, boarding, daycare and walking services along with a cocktail bar and park amenities.
Founded by Meggie Williams in 2016 as a local dog walking business, Skiptown operates three corporate locations, in Atlanta, Denver and Charlotte, North Carolina. It launched its franchise system in October.
Rotondo was recruited in 2024 by the brand’s private equity investors, Meaningful Partners and Focus Impact Partners, to scale the upstart concept and is targeting franchise growth in several key markets, starting with North Carolina, Colorado, Florida, Texas and Georgia. Reached in December, he said the company was in talks with several well-capitalized franchisees and expected to sign eight to 10 franchise agreements in the first quarter of 2026.
The cost to open a 10,000-plus-square-foot Skiptown location is between $904,679 and $1.7 million.
“I see Skiptown as an opportunity to really be kind of the new shining star in the pet care industry,” Rotondo said. “We have a very focused and functional proprietary tech stack we built that takes a very complex business and makes it very manageable and very easy for the pup parents with our app-based booking. I’m very excited about our future.”
Rotondo’s 30-plus years in franchising—mainly with restaurants—covers a lot of ground. He went from scooping ice cream at a local Baskin-Robbins as a teen growing up in the Chicago suburbs to becoming the so-called “top dog” at Skiptown, a fully remote company. He worked in the kitchen at Howard Johnson’s, where he recalled a slow-moving cook barking out orders while sitting on a pickle bucket in the back of the restaurant. He then worked his way up from being as assistant manager at a Wendy’s to becoming a district manager for the burger brand.
He parlayed those early experiences to become a regional manager for HoneyBaked Ham and then regional director of franchise management for Arby’s before embarking on a 10-year stint at Tropical Smoothie, where he was promoted from chief operating officer to CEO in 2012. He held that role until 2018.
Prior to joining Skiptown in 2024, Rotondo served as CEO of Active Brands-owned Altitude Trampoline Parks, which he helped grow to 100 locations.
“I’ve always loved the franchising model and the idea of creating wealth for franchisees,” he said. “I suppose the common denominator for me with all the great brands I’ve had the honor of working with is they’ve all been associated with hospitality in some way. Whether you’re running a restaurant chain or a trampoline park company or an e-commerce company like Edible, it’s always going to be a people-first business.
“Yes, it’s about quality, service and cleanliness, but it also comes down to motivating the people and training people you work with,” Rotondo said. “That, along with all the great relationships and connections I’ve made along the way, is what I’m most proud of accomplishing.”
Rotondo is excited to enter a growing and what he referred to as an underserved segment. Pet care, an industry that has been dominated by mom-and-pop businesses for years, is estimated to be worth about $150 billion in the United States, according to the American Pet Products Association. Franchise brands in the segment include Dogtopia, with about 300 units, Camp Bow Wow, K9 Resorts and more.
He said he’s going to lean on all his franchise experiences to grow Skiptown into a national brand.
“I have always valued hard work, dedication, mutual respect and the willingness to take on any task,” Rotondo said. “Yes, I will push people and I’m probably not for everybody. But I’ve been doing this long enough to know the importance of surrounding oneself with talented individuals and providing them with the support and freedom to excel.”
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