Methodology & Data Sources

Data Source

PlainFranchise is currently an editorial comparison registry, not a filing archive. Its 223 records do not yet carry a direct FDD URL, document identifier, and retrieval date for each displayed value. We therefore do not represent a registry value as a verified copy of an FDD. Use the registry to identify questions, then obtain the brand's current Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) before relying on a figure. Under the FTC Franchise Rule (16 CFR Part 436), franchisors must provide a current FDD before a sale or payment; the original document remains the appropriate source for a material decision.

Coverage

PlainFranchise lists 223 franchise brands across 15 business sectors, from food and beverage to home services, fitness, education, and business services. The registry is a research aid, not a complete universe or an assertion that a current filing has been checked for every brand.

Data Extracted from FDDs

The registry's column names correspond to the following commonly used FDD disclosure categories. This describes the intended interpretation of the fields; it is not record-level provenance.

• Item 5 and 6, Fees: Initial franchise fee (the upfront licensing fee), ongoing royalty rates (typically a percentage of gross sales), and advertising or brand fund contributions. These recurring fees are the primary ongoing cost of franchise ownership beyond operating expenses.
• Item 7, Initial Investment: Minimum and maximum total startup costs as estimated by the franchisor, including real estate or lease deposits, construction and buildout, equipment and signage, initial inventory, insurance, training travel expenses, and working capital reserves for the first months of operation.
• Item 19, Financial Performance: Revenue, sales, or income representations where the franchisor chose to disclose them. Item 19 disclosure is voluntary under the FTC Franchise Rule, franchisors may choose not to include any financial performance data. When disclosed, figures may represent average revenue, median revenue, or revenue ranges for specific groups of franchised or company-owned units.
• Item 20, Outlets: Total franchised units, company-owned units, units opened, units closed, units transferred, and terminated or non-renewed agreements over a three-year period. This data reveals the net growth trajectory and franchise system stability.

Processing Pipeline

1. The current registry is a hand-maintained editorial seed. It has no committed raw ingestion feed and no per-record source-document mapping.
2. Before a record can be described as verified source data, it must link the exact FDD or official filing, the document year, and a retrieval date. That work is not complete in this release.
3. Dollar amounts are standardized across franchise systems, converting ranges to minimum and maximum values, and normalizing royalty and ad fund percentages to a consistent decimal format.
4. Investment tiers are classified using the Item 7 total initial investment range: Low (under $100K), Mid ($100K–$500K), High ($500K–$1M), and Premium (over $1M).
5. Sector classification is assigned based on the franchise's primary business activity, using categories aligned with common franchise industry taxonomy.
6. All data is loaded into a structured SQLite database serving brand profiles, sector listings, investment tier filters, and comparison tools.

Corpus placement (#N of M)

Brand and sector pages state where that entity sits in PlainFranchise's live registry corpus. Two independent ladders are published on each class so a single headline figure cannot masquerade as the whole story:

• Brands: total locations vs listed investment low: Item 20 unit count among tracked brands (highest = #1), paired with Item 7 initial investment low (highest USD = #1). Cleaning systems can lead unit count at low entry cost; fine-dining brands reverse that (for example Benihana sits near the bottom on units while near the top on investment).
• Sectors: brand inventory vs mean investment low: number of tracked brands in the sector (most = #1), paired with the sector's mean listed investment low (highest USD = #1). Travel can lead investment while sitting mid-pack on brand count.

Brand unit and investment ranks break remaining ties alphabetically by slug (ROW_NUMBER). Sector dual-rank sentences count how many peers sit strictly above a value, so equal brand counts share a place, and sectors with zero tracked brands are excluded from the denominator. These ranks are corpus placement inside PlainFranchise's editorial registry, not FTC ratings or an endorsement of any brand. Verify material figures in the brand's current FDD.

Data Currency and Update Frequency

The registry's year field is an editorial label, not proof that the current FDD has been retrieved or verified. Until direct source records are added, PlainFranchise does not make a currency claim for an individual franchise profile.

Accuracy Commitment

PlainFranchise does not claim to reproduce an FDD exactly in this release. No subjective ratings or proprietary scoring formulas are applied to the registry fields, and investment tiers are calculated from the listed investment range. A blank or missing field is not proof that a filing omits the underlying disclosure.

Where to obtain the controlling document

Every figure on this site is a starting point for a question, and the franchisor's current Franchise Disclosure Document is the answer. Franchise filings are public in the registration states, so you can retrieve the original yourself rather than taking our summary on trust:

• FTC Franchise Rule compliance guide (16 CFR Part 436): what a franchisor must give you, and when. Item 7 is the investment range, Item 19 the optional financial performance representation.
• SBA Franchise Directory: whether a brand's franchise agreement is eligible for SBA-backed financing, which is the first thing most buyers actually need to know.
• Minnesota CARDS franchise filings: a second registration-state archive, useful when a brand is not on file in another registration state.
• California DFPI, Franchise Investment Law: registration status and the state regulator's own guidance for prospective franchisees.

If a figure here disagrees with the current FDD, the FDD controls, and we would like to know: our corrections process explains how to report it.

Data Licensing and Reuse

PlainFranchise already publishes a dedicated FDD summary and Item 19 coverage download and embed surface (CSV and JSON, CC BY 4.0 with attribution, per our Terms of Use). The underlying FDD facts themselves are drawn from state franchise registries and are not owned by PlainFranchise; our compiled corpus placement, coverage statistics, and original editorial analysis are the licensed work. Bulk scraping or a competing derived dataset from unlisted pages still requires prior written permission, per the same clause. /llms.txt sets the terms for AI-assistant reuse.

PlainFranchise does not currently run affiliate links. If that ever changes, activation is operator-gated and any unit would follow a rule specific to this portal's content: franchise media has a well-documented conflict-of-interest pattern where "franchise broker" or "franchise consultant" referral services are paid by the franchisor when they steer a prospect into a deal, a payment structure invisible to the reader and directly opposed to independent evaluation. No future affiliate/referral unit may appear on a franchise detail page, the How to Evaluate a Franchise guide, or any Item 19/FDD content in the same view as language evaluating that franchise's investment merit; any unit would be confined to general educational pages, clearly labeled "Advertisement," disclose any referral-fee relationship in the same view (not buried in a separate disclosure page), and share the Module 36 density ceiling with AdSense. Checked one alternative ad network's public eligibility page against this portal (paperwork readiness only, not an application): baseline requirements are original content, a working privacy policy, and no restricted content categories - this portal's existing pages already satisfy all three.

Limitations

• Item 19 financial performance data is voluntary, many franchisors choose not to disclose revenue or profitability figures, and those that do may present the data in ways that highlight favorable results.
• Revenue figures represent gross sales, not franchisee profit. Actual profitability depends on operating costs, lease terms, labor costs, geographic market, and individual management quality, none of which are captured in FDD data.
• FDD data reflects conditions at the time of filing, which may be 6–18 months before publication. Current market conditions, unit closures, or fee changes since filing are not reflected until the next annual update.
• The current registry does not provide record-level provenance. A displayed value may be stale, incomplete, or wrong; the original current FDD controls.
• This site does not constitute financial, legal, or investment advice. Consult a franchise attorney and accountant before making any franchise investment decision.

Contact

Questions about our methodology? Contact us.