Cold Stone Creamery Franchise

Cold Stone Creamery, a Kahala Brands franchise, has been franchising since 1994 - 6 years after the concept was founded in 1988 , currently with 1,500 total locations in the food & beverage sector, headquartered in AZ. The 2024 FDD lists a total initial investment between $50K and $467K, with the 840% low-to-high spread driven mainly by site size, market, and how extensive the buildout runs. This figure includes the franchise fee of $42K, equipment, leasehold improvements, and initial working capital through the ramp-up period.

Ongoing royalties run 6.0% of gross sales; add the 3.0% advertising-fund contribution and the combined ongoing draw reaches 9.0% of gross sales. Worth noting: Cold Stone Creamery is among the roughly one-third of U.S. franchisors that voluntarily disclose financial performance data in Item 19. The reported average gross revenue per location is $600K; at that revenue level the typical unit hands back roughly $36K a year in royalty alone. Remember that revenue is not profit -- what a franchisee actually takes home hinges on rent, labor, cost of goods, and local demand.

Unit count is trending down for Cold Stone Creamery: a 0.7% net contraction year-over-year with 60 closures on the record. Do not treat contraction as automatically disqualifying, but do dig in: saturation, thin unit profitability, disputes with the franchisor, and planned pruning all produce the same headline number. Item 20 contacts can tell you which one this is.