COMET CLEANERS BUILDING AWORLD-CLASS ORGANIZATION J ack Godfrey Jr. is President and CEO of Comet Cleaners, the largest, fam- ily-owned dry cleaning franchise in America, and the third generation of owners of the company that his grand- father started in the 1920s. Both Jack’s grand- father and father, Jack Sr., were pioneers in the industry, evolving and innovating it with new techniques and systems as their empire grew, at one point, to over 600 full-service dry cleaning establishments across the United States and northern Mexico. When Godfrey took over the company from his father in 2007, his mission was to modern- ize its business model in the same manner that his forebears did in modernizing its technology. “When I bought the business from my dad, ten years ago, it was almost like a start-up busi- ness because my grandfather’s and my dad’s philosophy was a little different from mine,” he explains. “My grandfather started the business in the 1920s, and back in the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, franchising didn’t have a very good name. And that’s really why my grandfather and dad shied away from it for so long. But, I tried to get my dad to look at becoming a true franchise orga- COMET CLEANERS