20 Years In: How a Half-Day Preschool Franchise Grew From One Campus to 22 States

Twenty-two years ago, on their honeymoon, Jennifer and Drew McWilliams drew a preschool on a cocktail napkin.

Business North Carolina’s August issue picks up that story and follows it forward. Ivybrook Academy is now in its 20th year. Roughly 45 campuses are open, several dozen more are in development, and families in 22 states send their children to an Ivybrook classroom each morning.

The napkin is a good story. What happened in the two decades after it is the part worth studying, particularly for anyone weighing a half-day preschool franchise as a business.

A first-grade teacher ran out of patience with one pace for everyone

Jennifer spent three years teaching first grade in public school. She watched capable children get moved along at a speed that belonged to the calendar rather than to them. Some were ready for more. Some needed another week. The schedule did not care.

She brought the frustration home to Drew, who was selling real estate for a national homebuilder at the time. Those conversations turned into a curriculum. Jennifer eventually took two years away from the classroom to write it, drawing on Montessori, on the Reggio Emilia approach, and on Howard Gardner’s research into multiple intelligences.

That blend still defines what happens in an Ivybrook classroom. Montessori gives children the independence to choose work and follow it through. Reggio Emilia treats them as researchers with real questions, and asks teachers to document the thinking rather than just display the craft. Gardner’s work is the reason a child who thinks in patterns and a child who thinks in stories are both met where they are.

Half a day was the harder sell, and the right call

The McWilliams built the model around shorter, focused days for children between 18 months and six years old.

Most of the industry went the other direction. Full-day programs are easier to explain, easier to fill, and built around an adult’s workday. Ivybrook was built around a young child’s attention span, which does not stretch to eight hours no matter how good the classroom is.

The half-day model draws a wider mix of families than people expect: two working parents who piece the afternoon together with a nanny or a grandparent, a parent at home who wants their child in a real learning community before kindergarten, families who simply want their afternoons back. Some campuses now offer a second afternoon session for families who want more time.

Families camped out overnight in Weddington

The couple borrowed $2.1 million and opened the first campus in Weddington, in Union County, in 2007.

Word moved fast. On one of the first registration days, families slept in line overnight to get a spot. Cars filled the streets around the school. Drew describes it as “the lightning in the bottle for us.”

That night told them something: the families lining up had done their homework. They wanted Montessori and Reggio done well, in a schedule that respected their child’s rhythm. Those families enrolled, stayed, and sent their friends.

They ran the schools themselves for a decade before selling a single franchise

A second campus near Charlotte followed. Then came ten years of operating both, with Jennifer running education, curriculum, and daily operations, and Drew handling real estate, marketing, and finance.

Only after that did they open the model to franchise owners.

Ten years of running your own classrooms before franchising is unusual, and it shows up in what franchisees receive today: a proprietary curriculum tested on real children, an operating model refined through real enrollment cycles, and a corporate team in Charlotte, 17 people, whose entire job is supporting campus owners.

Growing at the right pace instead of the fastest one

Both founders describe pace as a deliberate choice. Entrepreneur magazine has named Ivybrook to its Franchise 500 for five consecutive years, and there are several dozen campuses in development. The brand could move faster. It has chosen not to.

The reason is protective. A preschool brand lives or dies on what happens inside individual classrooms, and a campus that opens before it has the right owner and the right team damages the families it serves before it damages the balance sheet.

When the founders evaluate prospective owners, financial qualification is the entry ticket. Jennifer has said the deciding factors are genuine commitment to children and families, leadership ability, and real alignment with what Ivybrook is trying to do. Educators now make up roughly 21 percent of the ownership group.

What it takes to own an Ivybrook Academy campus

Initial investment typically runs between $540,000 and $870,000, with the range driven mostly by real estate and construction costs in a given market. The franchise fee is $50,000, discounted 10 percent for qualified educators.

Since the 2020 pandemic, the real estate approach has shifted. New construction used to be the default. Retrofitting existing space is often the more cost-effective way into a market now. Owners can hold the real estate if they want to, though many prefer to lease and put their attention on running the school.

What twenty years buys the family walking in for a tour

Jennifer and Drew’s own children are 16 and 14. They grew up inside this business. Both can read a P&L.

For a parent booking a tour this fall, the twenty years show up in smaller ways: teachers who know how to document a child’s thinking and explain it to you, a classroom prepared before anyone arrives, a curriculum that was written rather than purchased.

Read the full feature in the August issue of Business North Carolina.